The Nation - News from Feb. 2, 1987

Arguments are to begin today in the custody phase of the trial that pits a surrogate mother and her husband against the couple who hired the woman to bear the child. The trial in Hackensack, N.J., started last month with testimony on the validity of the contract under which Mary Beth Whitehead agreed to be artificially inseminated with the sperm of William Stern and give the baby to Stern and his wife, Elizabeth. Superior Court Judge Harvey R. Sorkow, who is hearing the trial without a jury, will then rule on the two aspects of the case.