Witness Doubts Surrogate’s Claim of Bonding : Custody case: A professor of psychiatry says Anna Johnson’s statements while pregnant do not indicate that she had an attachment to the baby she was carrying.

An expert on child psychiatry testified Thursday that he does not believe Orange County surrogate mother Anna L. Johnson became emotionally attached to the baby she delivered for an infertile couple, and he 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 said 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 like “before your child is born” and “the child of someone else” indicates that she had not become attached to the baby.

Johnson told The 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.

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.

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 Wednesday 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 said custody should be awarded to the Calverts.