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Sacred Bond: The Legacy of Baby M
The author examines the legal, psychological, and ethical questions raised by the headline-making Baby M surrogacy trial between Mary Beth Whitehead and Bill and Betsy Stern
- GenresFeminism
212 pages, Hardcover
First published May 12, 1988
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About the author
Phyllis Chesler
37 books398 followersPhyllis Chesler is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at City University of New York. She is a best- selling author, a legendary feminist leader, a psychotherapist and an expert courtroom witness. Dr. Chesler has published thousands of articles and, most recently, studies, about honor-related violence including honor killings. She is the author of 20 books, including Women and Madness and An American Bride in Kabul. Her forthcoming book is titled Requiem for a Female Serial Killer, about serial killer Aileen Wuornos.
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December 11, 2025
ONE OF THE MOST WELL-KNOWN CONTESTED CASES OF SURROGACY
Phyllis Chesler (b. 1940) is an emeritus professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at the College of Staten Island (CUNY).
She begins this 1988 book, “On February 6, 1985, Mary Beth Whitehead, a 28-year-old housewife and mother of an 11-year old boy and a 9-year-old girl, signed a pre-conception or surrogate-parenting contract with lawyer Noel Keane’s Infertility Center of New York (ICNY). The Agreement provided that … the ‘Surrogate’ would not smoke, drink, or take any drugs during pregnancy; that she would assume all medical risks---including death---and that she would submit to amniocentesis and/or abortion upon the demand of 38-year-old biochemist Bill Sterm (the ‘Natural Father’) and his wife, 30-year-old physician Betsy Stern. Mary Beth was to receive no compensation if, after trying, she failed to conceive… and $10,000 if she gave birth to Bill’s healthy baby---and legally surrendered custody to him; i.e., if she signed the adoption papers… so that Betsy would legally adopt Bill’s genetic child.” (Pg. 3)
She continues, “On March 27, 1986, accompanied by her husband [Richard/Rick], Mary Beth gave birth to a daughter---whom she thought looked just like herself. Instantly Mary Beth knew that she’d made a mistake, that she couldn’t abandon or sell her own flesh and blood, that she must keep and raise her child. Mary Beth and Richard named the baby Sara Elizabeth Whitehead and… filed the birth certificate in their own names. (A husband is automatically the legal father of all his wife’s children whether she becomes pregnant by him, by artificial insemination, or by adulterous intercourse.)… Mary Beth refused to take the $10,000 or to sign the adoption papers. She took Sara home and baptized her in the Catholic Church.” (Pg. 4)
She adds, “The Sterns hired a lawyer… who sought court intervention… The Sterns believed that Mary Beth was so ‘mentally unstable’ that she might exercise her … right to move elsewhere. [The judge] issued his custody order without interviewing Mary Beth and without giving her a chance to hire a lawyer. On … May 5, the Sterns, accompanied by the police, arrived at the Whitehead home with an order for ‘Melissa Elizabeth Stern’ (the name the Stern had picked…) The Whiteheads showed them the birth certificate… Then Mary Beth went into the bedroom and passed the baby out the window to Rick. When police discovered that the baby was gone, they handcuffed Mary Beth… [but] with no legal basis for arresting her, released her… Mary Beth and her family fled to Florida and took refuge with her parents.” (Pg. 5)
She goes on, “Bill knew that Mary Beth was hiding somewhere in Florida. She kept calling him in distress. [The Judge] had frozen the Whitehead bank account… the bank was about to foreclose on the mortgage to their New Jersey home.” (Pg. 5) “On July 28, 1986… Mary Beth was hospitalized in Florida with a severe infection… On July 31, while the Sterns waited at the police station, detectives armed with an order for Melissa entered [Mary Beth’s mother’s] home… took Sara from her crib… [The Judge] did not permit Sara and Mary Beth to see each other for 5½ weeks… The visits took place in a state institution… with an armed guard… A year after Mary Beth gave birth… and seven months after a stressful public trial, the judge terminated Mary Beth’s parental rights… he legalized the surrogacy contract; gave permanent custody to the Sterns; and he allowed Betsy Stern to legally adopt Baby M, ‘Melissa Elizabeth Stern.’” (Pg. 7-8)
Chesler asks [these are just a sampling of her questions], “Who is a child’s true mother? The woman who gives birth to her? Or the woman married to the child’s father? The woman who actually takes care of her? … Is the child’s true mother really her father?... Should biological motherhood be abolished in the ‘best interests’ of the child?... What would replace the mother-infant bond… Would the absence of this very specific blood bond ultimately weaken and destroy us as a species?... We must decide: Is a father only an income-generating sperm donor? Or is he as ‘maternal’ as any biological mother?... Does a biological mother or a genetic father ‘own’ a child?... If a woman has the legal right to terminate a pregnancy because she and no one else has a right to her body, then at what point does her (pregnant) body cease to be hers alone?... does a sperm donor or legal husband have the right to force her into an amniocentesis test or an abortion?” (Pg. 9-11)
She reports, “contrary to popular myth---children often remain with their mothers upon divorce not because judges are biased against men but by ‘parental choice’ … ‘when fathers do litigate custody, they win at least as often as mothers do.’… How can this happen? Very easily---in a culture that overvalues men, fathers, and money and undervalues women, mothers, and mother-child bonding… [The] message is a chilling one: that children belong to men (sperm donors, boyfriends, legal husbands) when men want them, but not when men don’t… No birth mother has a right to her child if she’s poor or unwed, lives in an impoverished country… People think that a child is entitled to maternal care---but not necessarily from her birth mother. Any woman… will do, as long as, like Betsy Stern, she is obedient to the child’s father…” (Pg. 15-16)
She asserts, “Baby M [the child's name in the court case] is every child who has ever been physically, legally, or psychologically separated from her birth mother ‘for her own good’ in the mistaken belief that a child needs a father, a father-dominated family, and/or money far more than she needs her birth mother, love, and freedom.” (Pg. 17)
She recounts, “My students are mostly Catholic working-class women (like Mary Beth), yet they have no sympathy for her. They speak as if they’d like to stone her to death. ‘What would happen if we all reneged on our half of the bargain?’… they say that she is driving the definition of Woman downward from ‘Mother of God’ to ‘incubator of a made-to-order product.’ The women say that she agreed to abandon a child for money. Punish HER, not us… must women give up the right to keep our children---a right we don’t yet have---for the right NOT to bear children? … how can we deny that women have a profound and everlasting bond with the children they’ve birthed; that this bond begins in utero; that it is further strengthened by the experience of childbirth, breast-feeding and primary childcare, and by the socialization into motherhood that women (not men) receive? How can we deny … that children suffer terribly in all kinds of ways when this bond is prematurely or abruptly terminated? Acknowledging these truths does not demote women to the status of surrogate uteruses---or men to the status of sperm donors. Patriarchal ‘civilization’ has already done so.” (Pg. 21-23)
Chesler admits “For a long time, I couldn’t understand why more women, feminist and antifeminist alike, didn’t view Mary Beth as a heroine… Most didn’t---because Mary Beth’s choice of surrogacy and then her change of heart about that choice put them… into conflict with two opposing female role models: The Christian/religious one and the feminist/secular one… surrogacy … is also a reflection of the war currently raging between secular feminism and religious patriarchy.” (Pg. 49)
She notes, “Are contracts sacred? Are they more sacred than the bond between a mother and child?... People condemn a surrogacy-contract mother, first for signing an unnatural agreement, then for trying to back out of it. People actually say, ‘If she’s allowed to change her mind, then no man can trust a woman.’” (Pg. 109-110)
This is a VERY thought-provoking book, that will be of great interest to anyone studying the issue of surrogacy. [P.S.- Mary Beth later divorced Richard, remarried, and wrote a book; Melissa legally terminated Mary Beth’s parental [visitation] rights, and she is quite happy as the child of the Sterns.]
Phyllis Chesler (b. 1940) is an emeritus professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies at the College of Staten Island (CUNY).
She begins this 1988 book, “On February 6, 1985, Mary Beth Whitehead, a 28-year-old housewife and mother of an 11-year old boy and a 9-year-old girl, signed a pre-conception or surrogate-parenting contract with lawyer Noel Keane’s Infertility Center of New York (ICNY). The Agreement provided that … the ‘Surrogate’ would not smoke, drink, or take any drugs during pregnancy; that she would assume all medical risks---including death---and that she would submit to amniocentesis and/or abortion upon the demand of 38-year-old biochemist Bill Sterm (the ‘Natural Father’) and his wife, 30-year-old physician Betsy Stern. Mary Beth was to receive no compensation if, after trying, she failed to conceive… and $10,000 if she gave birth to Bill’s healthy baby---and legally surrendered custody to him; i.e., if she signed the adoption papers… so that Betsy would legally adopt Bill’s genetic child.” (Pg. 3)
She continues, “On March 27, 1986, accompanied by her husband [Richard/Rick], Mary Beth gave birth to a daughter---whom she thought looked just like herself. Instantly Mary Beth knew that she’d made a mistake, that she couldn’t abandon or sell her own flesh and blood, that she must keep and raise her child. Mary Beth and Richard named the baby Sara Elizabeth Whitehead and… filed the birth certificate in their own names. (A husband is automatically the legal father of all his wife’s children whether she becomes pregnant by him, by artificial insemination, or by adulterous intercourse.)… Mary Beth refused to take the $10,000 or to sign the adoption papers. She took Sara home and baptized her in the Catholic Church.” (Pg. 4)
She adds, “The Sterns hired a lawyer… who sought court intervention… The Sterns believed that Mary Beth was so ‘mentally unstable’ that she might exercise her … right to move elsewhere. [The judge] issued his custody order without interviewing Mary Beth and without giving her a chance to hire a lawyer. On … May 5, the Sterns, accompanied by the police, arrived at the Whitehead home with an order for ‘Melissa Elizabeth Stern’ (the name the Stern had picked…) The Whiteheads showed them the birth certificate… Then Mary Beth went into the bedroom and passed the baby out the window to Rick. When police discovered that the baby was gone, they handcuffed Mary Beth… [but] with no legal basis for arresting her, released her… Mary Beth and her family fled to Florida and took refuge with her parents.” (Pg. 5)
She goes on, “Bill knew that Mary Beth was hiding somewhere in Florida. She kept calling him in distress. [The Judge] had frozen the Whitehead bank account… the bank was about to foreclose on the mortgage to their New Jersey home.” (Pg. 5) “On July 28, 1986… Mary Beth was hospitalized in Florida with a severe infection… On July 31, while the Sterns waited at the police station, detectives armed with an order for Melissa entered [Mary Beth’s mother’s] home… took Sara from her crib… [The Judge] did not permit Sara and Mary Beth to see each other for 5½ weeks… The visits took place in a state institution… with an armed guard… A year after Mary Beth gave birth… and seven months after a stressful public trial, the judge terminated Mary Beth’s parental rights… he legalized the surrogacy contract; gave permanent custody to the Sterns; and he allowed Betsy Stern to legally adopt Baby M, ‘Melissa Elizabeth Stern.’” (Pg. 7-8)
Chesler asks [these are just a sampling of her questions], “Who is a child’s true mother? The woman who gives birth to her? Or the woman married to the child’s father? The woman who actually takes care of her? … Is the child’s true mother really her father?... Should biological motherhood be abolished in the ‘best interests’ of the child?... What would replace the mother-infant bond… Would the absence of this very specific blood bond ultimately weaken and destroy us as a species?... We must decide: Is a father only an income-generating sperm donor? Or is he as ‘maternal’ as any biological mother?... Does a biological mother or a genetic father ‘own’ a child?... If a woman has the legal right to terminate a pregnancy because she and no one else has a right to her body, then at what point does her (pregnant) body cease to be hers alone?... does a sperm donor or legal husband have the right to force her into an amniocentesis test or an abortion?” (Pg. 9-11)
She reports, “contrary to popular myth---children often remain with their mothers upon divorce not because judges are biased against men but by ‘parental choice’ … ‘when fathers do litigate custody, they win at least as often as mothers do.’… How can this happen? Very easily---in a culture that overvalues men, fathers, and money and undervalues women, mothers, and mother-child bonding… [The] message is a chilling one: that children belong to men (sperm donors, boyfriends, legal husbands) when men want them, but not when men don’t… No birth mother has a right to her child if she’s poor or unwed, lives in an impoverished country… People think that a child is entitled to maternal care---but not necessarily from her birth mother. Any woman… will do, as long as, like Betsy Stern, she is obedient to the child’s father…” (Pg. 15-16)
She asserts, “Baby M [the child's name in the court case] is every child who has ever been physically, legally, or psychologically separated from her birth mother ‘for her own good’ in the mistaken belief that a child needs a father, a father-dominated family, and/or money far more than she needs her birth mother, love, and freedom.” (Pg. 17)
She recounts, “My students are mostly Catholic working-class women (like Mary Beth), yet they have no sympathy for her. They speak as if they’d like to stone her to death. ‘What would happen if we all reneged on our half of the bargain?’… they say that she is driving the definition of Woman downward from ‘Mother of God’ to ‘incubator of a made-to-order product.’ The women say that she agreed to abandon a child for money. Punish HER, not us… must women give up the right to keep our children---a right we don’t yet have---for the right NOT to bear children? … how can we deny that women have a profound and everlasting bond with the children they’ve birthed; that this bond begins in utero; that it is further strengthened by the experience of childbirth, breast-feeding and primary childcare, and by the socialization into motherhood that women (not men) receive? How can we deny … that children suffer terribly in all kinds of ways when this bond is prematurely or abruptly terminated? Acknowledging these truths does not demote women to the status of surrogate uteruses---or men to the status of sperm donors. Patriarchal ‘civilization’ has already done so.” (Pg. 21-23)
Chesler admits “For a long time, I couldn’t understand why more women, feminist and antifeminist alike, didn’t view Mary Beth as a heroine… Most didn’t---because Mary Beth’s choice of surrogacy and then her change of heart about that choice put them… into conflict with two opposing female role models: The Christian/religious one and the feminist/secular one… surrogacy … is also a reflection of the war currently raging between secular feminism and religious patriarchy.” (Pg. 49)
She notes, “Are contracts sacred? Are they more sacred than the bond between a mother and child?... People condemn a surrogacy-contract mother, first for signing an unnatural agreement, then for trying to back out of it. People actually say, ‘If she’s allowed to change her mind, then no man can trust a woman.’” (Pg. 109-110)
This is a VERY thought-provoking book, that will be of great interest to anyone studying the issue of surrogacy. [P.S.- Mary Beth later divorced Richard, remarried, and wrote a book; Melissa legally terminated Mary Beth’s parental [visitation] rights, and she is quite happy as the child of the Sterns.]
November 28, 2007
Chessler takes on all sides in the Baby M case, examining the case for Birth and Adoptive parents, the rights of children, and the intervention of the state in sorting out very private, personal issues. She challenges us to stop peeping through windows, have the courage to live with our choices, and be responsible human beings. It was the best thing written about the story of who should raise the child, in which nobody really had in mind the true best interests of the child at the heart of things. it was a terrible situation made public because it was a slow news week, Phyllis Chessler sorted through things in the aftermath and made sense of it. Does anyone remember what happened to the child who was Baby M? Does anybody even care?
November 10, 2011
2.5 stars. A feminist's view of the Baby M case from New Jersey where the surrogate mom (also the baby's biological mom) decided she wanted to keep the baby once it was born but was forced to give it up. The author poses interesting questions about the situation and gives some illuminating analogies that expose some of the biases that still exist against women and mothers in this country. That said, I found it a bit dry and didn't think it especially well-written. I'm glad to have read it and be aware of some of the issues it raised but also glad to be done with it!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews