Court Scrutinizes Litigants : Emotional Stability Focus of Baby M Custody Trial

Four weeks into a trial its principals say they never wanted in the first place, the complicated question of custody of a child conceived by artificial insemination is focusing sharply on the emotional stability of the three people vying to be her parents.

Now a chubby 11-month-old with sandy hair and cheerful blue eyes, the infant is called Melissa by biochemist William Stern and his pediatrician wife Dr. Elizabeth Stern. They are the Tenafly, N.J., couple who contracted to have Mary Beth Whitehead bear a child from William Stern’s sperm after Elizabeth Stern learned that pregnancy could worsen her mild case of multiple sclerosis.

But Whitehead, the 29-year-old mother of a 13-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter, prefers to call the child Sara, the name registered on a birth certificate that she says lists her as the mother and her husband, Richard, as the father.

In courtroom testimony, however, and in headlines around the world, the girl is known as Baby M, the name that has become synonymous with the precedent-setting case of a surrogate mother taken to court for reneging on her contract to give up the baby.

‘A Real Nightmare’

“It’s a mess, believe me, it’s a real nightmare,” Whitehead said during a recess at Bergen County Superior Court here Tuesday.

And Stern, hurrying back to court for the afternoon’s testimony, shrugged and offered a beleaguered smile when asked how he and his wife, both 41, were bearing up under scrutiny that has seen their finances and their fitness to be parents debated day in and day out. “We’re hanging in there,” Stern said.

For most of the previous week, Whitehead heard her own history trotted out before the public. There was her husband’s alcoholism, the threatened foreclosure of their home in Brick Township, N.J., the couple’s period on the welfare rolls and her stints as go-go dancer, bartender and housecleaner.

Whitehead and her attorneys contend that the arrangement under which she agreed to accept $10,000 to bear William Stern’s baby is invalid because it violates laws against baby-selling. Whitehead never accepted the fee, and fled with the baby to Florida. Authorities seized the infant there last July 31 and granted temporary custody to the Sterns. Twice a week, Whitehead is allowed a two-hour, court-supervised visit with the child at a shelter not far from the courtroom, where spectators begin lining up for a handful of seats as early as 6:30 every morning.

Against Surrogate Parenting

Like many of those in the audience, Whitehead said she has come to have strong feelings against surrogate parenting, a notion she said she formerly embraced because her sister is infertile and because she felt she could help others who could not bear children by doing it for them. Now Whitehead calls that decision “a mistake,” and brands surrogate parenting “something the world should not allow.”

In testimony on Tuesday, a nationally known psychologist hired by the Sterns said Whitehead suffers from a “mixed personality disorder” of such a nature that all contact between Whitehead and Baby M should be terminated immediately.

“Anything but termination of parental rights would cause continuous turmoil and confusion in the child’s life,” said Cornell University’s Lee Salk.

Basing his conclusions on the report of a psychiatrist scheduled to testify later in the landmark case, and conceding that he had never interviewed the defendant directly, Salk said Whitehead exhibits self-centeredness, impulsiveness, unpredictability and paranoia, and pronounced the Sterns “far and away more capable” of raising the child.

With Judge Harvey Sorkow expected to render a decision sometime in March, the custody phase of the trial will resume Tuesday, with Whitehead expected to take the stand once again in her own defense.

Both sides in the dispute have said they will appeal a decision not in their favor.