Psychiatry Professor Doubts Surrogate’s Emotional Bond

A renowned expert on child psychiatry testified Thursday that he does not believe surrogate mother Anna L. Johnson became emotionally attached to the baby she delivered for an infertile couple, and said he would be wary of giving her custody of the child.

Dr. Justin D. Call, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at UC Irvine, said he is suspicious of Johnson’s claim to a deep bond with the infant because of a statement she made in a newspaper interview and a letter she wrote to the baby’s genetic parents.

Johnson, 29, is the first surrogate mother in the nation to seek parental rights to a child not genetically related to her. Her lawyer is already predicting she will lose in Orange County Superior Court because emotions in the case are overshadowing the legal issues. But he feels certain of victory on appeal.

In the July 23 letter to Mark and Crispina Calvert, the infertile couple who hired her, Johnson threatened to keep the baby unless they immediately paid her the rest of her $10,000 fee. Call said Johnson’s use of phrases such as “before your child is born” and “the child of someone else” indicates that she had not become attached to the baby.

Johnson told The Los Angeles Times in early August, when she was seven months’ pregnant, that she did not feel bonded to the fetus because it was not made from her genetic material. The embryo implanted in her uterus was made from the Calverts’ sperm and egg.

“If it had been my egg, it would have made a real big difference,” Johnson said at the time. “But with (in-vitro fertilization), there’s no connection to me. . . . There’s been detachment from the baby from Day 1.”

Call, who testified for the Calverts in their bid for permanent custody of the boy born Sept. 19, said Johnson’s statement “very clearly supports the idea that the mother has not made an attachment to the child.” Lack of bonding by seven months into the pregnancy would “carry a very bad prognosis for continuing attachment after birth,” Call said.

“A reasonable person should be very circumspect about giving a woman full responsibility for a child she had not made a normal attachment to during pregnancy,” Call testified.

The baby’s court-appointed lawyer, Harold F. LaFlamme, elicited Call’s analysis of Johnson’s letter and her statement to The Times in an attempt to explore the validity of her claim to true bonding with the baby.

Johnson now denies saying that she did not feel attached to the baby. She argues that she is entitled to legal parental status because she carried and delivered the child, and because infant-mother bonding is more important than an agreement she signed.

Johnson’s lawyer, Richard C. Gilbert, sought to have a Times reporter and photographer excluded from the court as potential witnesses about Johnson’s statements, and then expanded his request to include all news media. But Superior Court Judge Richard N. Parslow Jr. denied the requests.

The Calverts’ attorney, Christian R. Van Deusen, tried to undermine Johnson’s claims by asking Call if infants form bonds of affection toward their gestational mothers.

Call testified that although there is ample evidence to show that most women develop deep feelings for their babies, there is none to demonstrate similar sentiments in an infant.

That contradicted an expert who testified Tuesday for Johnson, saying that several studies indicate that infants form powerful emotional bonds to their birth mothers. Dr. David B. Chamberlain said that if 12 mothers were assembled in the courtroom jury box, a newborn could recognize the woman who bore him.

Although Call acknowledged that an unrelated gestational mother plays an “obvious” role in nourishing the fetus, he minimized that contribution, saying a child’s genetic makeup determines most of its future form and development. He said the baby’s strongest connections are to its genetic parents.

Call advocated that custody be awarded to the Calverts, saying that it is more important for a child to be with his genetic parents than with the unrelated woman who delivered him, because much of a child’s sense of identity is derived from knowing his relatives.

A “shared parenting” arrangement, such as the one Johnson seeks, in which all three adults would help raise the baby, could be upsetting to the child because he could be caught between conflicting sets of values or parenting styles, Call said. That kind of upset could impair the boy’s ability to form bonds with others in the future, Call said.

During cross-examination, Gilbert attacked Call’s assessment of Johnson’s bond to the baby, saying that surrogate mothers who feel ready to relinquish their children at birth have been subjected to “mind-control programs.”

Gilbert asked for Call’s opinion on Johnson’s use of the news media to publicize her case. Posing the question as a hypothetical situation, Gilbert said the birth mother feared her baby would be taken from her, so she “left a trail of bread crumbs”--notified reporters.

“Would you criticize her for making a public record if she did it to leave a trail of bread crumbs . . . in hopes that one day the baby would find its way back or, at the very least, the baby would know how hard she tried?” Gilbert asked.

Call replied that he would try to get such a birth mother to explore the fears that led to her use of publicity.