Surrogacy on the Stand

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios

Society & Culture, History

4.5 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

March 27, 1986. Mary Beth Whitehead is in labor. She’s giving birth to a baby girl today, and her husband Richard is by her side. But the Whiteheads are not, contractually-speaking, this child’s parents. Surrogacy is a brand new advancement, and another couple, William and Elizabeth Stern, are contractually owed a baby. When the little girl is born, Mary Beth has a change of heart and runs. This begins a two-year legal battle that launches the complicated question of surrogacy onto the national stage. Who is Baby M’s mother? And how did this case change our understanding of parenthood forever?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The History Channel, original podcast.
0:04.4	History this week, March 27, 1986.
0:11.0	I'm Sally Helm.
0:15.2	At the Monmouth Medical Center in New Jersey,
0:18.2	a baby has just been born.
0:21.3	According to her birth certificate, her name is Sarah Elizabeth Whitehead
0:26.0	and her parents are Mary Beth and Richard Whitehead.
0:30.0	Mary Beth and Richard are together in a hospital room surrounded by flowers,
0:34.2	pink tulips from Richard's sister, a bouquet from Mary Beth's mom and dad.
0:38.5	And pretty soon, the couple gets some visitors.
0:42.5	William and Elizabeth Stern.
0:46.5	The Sterns have a very different perspective on this whole tranquil maternity ward scene.
0:52.5	They believe that this baby is named Melissa, not Sarah.
0:58.5	And the Whiteheads aren't the parents.
1:01.0	They are.
1:03.0	William Stern is the biological father of the baby,
1:06.0	and Mary Beth Whitehead is her biological mom.
1:10.0	But she's been carrying the child as a surrogate.
1:13.0	And the whole plan has been that once the baby is born,
1:16.0	Mary Beth will give her up to the Sterns.
1:18.0	In fact, the Sterns don't know that Mary Beth has gone ahead and filled out the birth certificate with the name Sarah.
1:25.5	They don't know that she's listed her husband, Richard, as the father.
	...

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