The Nation - News from March 30, 1988

Mary Beth Whitehead-Gould admitted that she sold the story of her wedding and photos of Baby M, the child she bore under a surrogate motherhood contract, to a tabloid for $20,000 last November. Whitehead-Gould told a judge at a visitation hearing in Hackensack, N.J., that she knew there would be widespread interest in her marriage to her second husband, New York accountant Dean Gould, and that she hoped the agreement with Star magazine would keep other reporters away. Her attorney, Joel Siegal, said outside the courtroom that Whitehead-Gould also was broke at the time and needed the $20,000. Whitehead-Gould’s alleged penchant for publicity has been an issue in the hearing, the final chapter in a dispute over the now 2-year-old girl she was hired to bear for William and Elizabeth Stern of Tenafly.