Baby M Focus Should Shift to Adoption, Experts Say

The Baby M case shows that society is “willing to view women as incubators,” rather than deal with the causes of infertility and examine the country’s adoption policy, experts said Sunday.

Dr. Wendy Chavkin, an obstetrician with the New York City Public Health Department, agreed with William Pierce, president of the National Committee for Adoption, that more emphasis should be placed on adoption rather than providing babies through surrogate mothers.

“I think that as a society we have taken the position that certain things are not for sale,” Chavkin said on ABC-TV’s “This Week With David Brinkley.”

“We do not permit people to sell babies in the adoption scheme of things,” she said. “Nor do we permit that people can sell their body organs.”

‘Trying to Remake System’

Pierce, appearing with Chavkin, said: “One of the things we believe the country should be doing is to focus more on trying to remake the system so that it is possible for more of the young women who are pregnant to place their children for adoption.

“Every year at least 300,000 teen-agers deliver babies out of wedlock,” Pierce said. “If we provided better services to those young women . . . at least half of them would choose adoption as their plan.”

“I think it’s a great jump for the society to be willing to view women as incubators rather than to examine the causes of infertility,” Chavkin said.

In the recent court ruling involving Baby M and surrogate mother Mary Beth Whitehead, the child’s biological father, William Stern, was given custody of the child, and Whitehead was denied visitation rights.

Lawyers on Program

Also appearing on the program were Whitehead’s lawyer, Harold Cassidy; Stern’s lawyer, Gary Skoloff; William Handel, director of the Center for Surrogate Parenting, and New York state Sen. John Dunne, who has introduced legislation that would regulate surrogate births.