Word: sterne
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Mary Beth Whitehead signed an agreement stipulating that, in return for $10,000, she would permit herself to be impregnated by William Stern's sperm, carry the product of that union in her womb and then surrender the resulting child to Stern. Sorkow refused to see so straight forward an agreement obscured. He prohibited any discussion of the nature of the bond between mother and child and barred testimony about the legality of surrogate parenting...
...awarded custody to Stern, permitted Elizabeth Stern to adopt the baby on the spot and--keeping things tidy--denied the court-appointed guardian's recommendation that the natural mother retain some parental rights. A deal, Sorkow's ruling reminded those who may have forgotten the schoolyard-taunt of a kid who has taken advantage of another, is a deal...
...DISPUTE surrounding Baby M involved profound issues of law, psychology and theology. Whitehead thought she had a product to sell, in this case an unfertilized human egg, and a service to offer, that of a mobile human incubator. Stern wanted what Whitehead could provide and agreed to a price. What went unaccounted for in the deal was Whitehead's joy at the baby's first kick, whatever sense of expectation surges together with a bout of morning sickness and the satisfaction of a mother holding her child in a delivery room...
...agreement Stern and Whitehead struck required her to experience such feelings--for a fee. But there are limits to what men and women can know about their own bodies or their own psyches, and they remain even when technology makes it possible for one woman to bear a child for another. No one can predict what feelings a particular pregnancy might inspire well enough to put a price on them...
Furthermore, the emotions Stern and Whitehead tried to barter were not really their own. Like love, hate or appreciation of beauty, motherhood is something an individual can experience but not package for sale. The experiences of pregnancy, though personal, are too fundamentally human to be mere private property. What Whitehead felt during the nine months she carried Melissa, whom she calls Sara, were emotions that are part of her humanity. What is not owned cannot be sold...