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CNN Saturday Morning News

Surrogate Mother's Parents Don't Want Implanted Twins

Aired August 11, 2001 - 09:10   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Now, turning now to unusual case in California, Helen Beasley is a surrogate mother carrying twins. She says the couple who arranged for her to bear their child doesn't want the twins. Now what?

We get more now from Lauren Reynolds (ph) of our affiliate station KGTV.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HELEN BEASLEY, SURROGATE MOTHER: Because the parents don't want them. I mean, they've made that very clear.

LAUREN REYNOLDS, KGTV REPORTER (voice-over): Helen is a surrogate who says the twin babies she's carrying have been abandoned by their parents before they're even born. She's not legally or biologically their mother, and she's distraught over what's going to happen to them.

BEASLEY: And you can't help but get attached to them, you know. And I just -- I just want the best for them.

REYNOLDS: Helen says she met the intended parents on a surrogacy Web site. They are both attorneys in northern California with one son. They told her they'd been trying for six years to have another baby.

They fly her out here to California, she undergoes testing. They have a donor, and they use the intended father's sperm, create these embryos, transfer them into Helen. Helen's pregnant with twins.

BEASLEY: I mean, as far as I was concerned, everything was going really well.

REYNOLDS: But Helen says the couple started acting strangely when they found out it was twins, and that the egg donor was overweight. She says they had an agreement that she would only abort a baby before the 12th week.

BEASLEY: They knew about the twins, you know, from eight weeks, so they had all those weeks to sort it out. So I can't imagine how it took them until 13, you know, 13 weeks to say, OK, we'd better make an appointment now. THERESA ERICKSON, ATTORNEY: They didn't want two babies. They wanted one baby, and that's it. And when Helen said she wouldn't reduce, they said, Well, we only wanted one, we don't want to separate them, so you figure out what you're going to do with the two babies.

REYNOLDS: Helen is now suing the couple in civil court for emotional distress and breach of contract. In family court, she's suing to get their parental rights terminated so that another couple can adopt the two babies.

ERICKSON: So what we want to do is establish their rights as parents and then basically take them away.

REYNOLDS: Bob Sellmeth, director of the Child Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego, finds the case disturbing because, he says, the children are being treated like a commodity.

BOB SELLMETH, DIRECTOR, CHILD ADVOCACY INSTITUTE, UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO: This is not something you take back to the pawn shop if you don't like it. You created something. If you have the right to create it, which is another question, of course, but once you've created something like this, you have an obligation to meet your responsibilities.

REYNOLDS: Helen says adopting the babies herself is not an option. She's a legal secretary raising a son on her own. But she feels very responsible for the two children growing inside of her.

BEASLEY: My ideal solution is that, you know, the babies are born here, and I'm allowed to find new parents for them.

REYNOLDS: Lauren Reynolds, 10 News.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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