The Nation - News from Jan. 8, 1987

A surrogate mother was hysterical and wracked with guilt until she reneged on a deal to turn her baby over to the childless couple who hired her, the young woman’s husband testified. “She couldn’t sleep and would wake up crying and screaming,” Richard Whitehead testified on the third day of the landmark “Baby M” trial in Hackensack, N.J. Mary Beth Whitehead, 29, is the first surrogate mother taken to trial for keeping an infant she promised to bear for William and Elizabeth Stern for $10,000. The custody and breach-of-contract dispute is expected to set a precedent that could have a major impact on the unregulated hiring of surrogate mothers to help infertile couples start families.