The State - News from June 7, 1987

Concerns about the rights of third-world surrogate mothers led the American Civil Liberties Union to provide legal support to an illegal immigrant in San Diego, the organization said. Gregory Marshall, the ACLU’s local legal director, said the specter of “crude manipulation” of fundamental rights is raised by offering poverty-stricken women from Mexico or Honduras as little as $2,000 to become surrogate mothers. In the San Diego case, Alejandra Munoz, 21, who formerly lived in a small town outside Mazatlan, Mexico, bore a child for her second cousin in Chula Vista. After the birth, a legal battle developed, and Munoz, who speaks no English and has a third-grade education, was temporarily barred from seeing 11-month-old Lydia Michelle Haro, until the custody question can be settled in Superior Court.