A Surrogate's Story

By Claudia Wallis

Valerie is a New Jersey mother of two boys, age two and three, whom she describes as "little monsters full of mischief." Her husband works as a truck driver, and money is tight. The family of four is living with her mother while they save for an apartment of their own. One day last March, Valerie, 23, who prefers to remain anonymous, saw the following advertisement in a local New Jersey paper: Surrogate mother wanted. Couple unable to have child willing to pay $10,000 fee and expenses to woman to carry husband's child. Conception by artificial insemination. All replies strictly confidential.

The advertisement made Valerie stop and think. "I had very easy pregnancies," she says, "and I didn't think it would be a problem for me to carry another child. I figured maybe I could help someone." And then there was the lure of the $10,000 fee. "The money could help pay for my children's education," she says, "or just generally to make their lives better."

The next day Valerie went for an interview at the Infertility Center of New York, a profit-making agency owned by Michigan Attorney Noel Keane, a pioneer in the controversial business of matching surrogate mothers with infertile parents. She was asked to fill out a five-page application, detailing her medical history and reasons for applying. Most applicants are "genuine, sincere, family-oriented women," says agency Administrator Donna Spiselman. The motives they list range from "I enjoy being pregnant" and an urge to "share maternal joy" to a need to alleviate guilt about a past abortion by bearing someone else's child. Valerie's application and her color photograph were added to 300 others kept in scrapbooks for prospective parents to peruse. Valerie was amazed when only a week later her application was selected, and she was asked to return to the agency to meet the couple.

Like most people who find their way to surrogate agencies, "Aaron" and "Mandy" (not their real names) had undergone years of treatment for infertility. Aaron, 36, a Yale-educated lawyer, and his advertising-executive wife, 30, had planned to have children soon after marrying in 1980. They bought a two-bedroom town house in Hoboken, N.J., in a neighborhood that Aaron describes as being "full of babies." But after three years of tests, it became painfully clear that there was little hope of having the child they longed for. They considered adoption, but were discouraged by the long waiting lists at American agencies and the expense and complexity of foreign adoptions. Then, to Aaron's surprise, Mandy suggested that they try a surrogate.

Their first choice from the Manhattan agency failed her mandatory psychological test, which found her to be too emotionally unstable. Valerie, who was Aaron and Mandy's second choice, passed without a hitch. A vivacious woman who is an avid reader, she more than met the couple's demands for a surrogate who was "reasonably pretty," did not smoke or drink heavily and had no family history of genetic disease. Says Aaron: "We were particularly pleased that she asked us questions to find out whether we really want this child."

At first, Valerie's husband had some reservations about the arrangement, but, she says, he ultimately supported it "100%." Valerie is not concerned about what her neighbors might think because the family is planning to move after the birth. Nor does she believe that her children will be troubled by the arrangement because, she says, they are too young to understand. And although her parents are being deprived of another grandchild, they have raised no objections.

For their part, Aaron and Mandy have agreed to pay Valerie $10,000 to be kept in an escrow account until the child is in their legal custody. In addition, they have paid an agency fee of $7,500 and are responsible for up to $4,000 in doctors' fees, lab tests, legal costs, maternity clothes and other expenses. In April, Valerie became pregnant after just one insemination with Aaron's sperm. Mandy says she was speechless with joy when she heard the news.

Relationships between surrogate mothers and their employers vary widely. At the National Center for Surrogate Parenting, an agency in Chevy Chase, Md., the two parties never meet. At the opposite extreme is the case of Marilyn Johnston, 31, of Detroit. Johnston and the couple who hired her became so close during her pregnancy that they named their daughter after her. She continues to make occasional visits to see the child she bore and says, "I feel like a loving aunt to her."

Not all surrogate arrangements work so well. Some women have refused to give up the child they carried for nine months. As a lawyer, Aaron is aware that the contract he signed with Valerie would not hold up in court, should she decide to back out of it. "But I'm a romantic," he says. "I have always felt that the real binding force was not paper but human commitment." Valerie, whose pregnancy is just beginning to show, says she is "conditioning" herself not to become too attached to the baby. "It is not my husband's child," she says, "so I don't have the feeling behind it as if it were ours." She does not plan to see the infant after it is born, but, she admits, "I might like to see a picture once in a while."

--By Claudia Wallis. Reported by Ruth Mehrtens Galvin/New York

With reporting by Ruth Mehrtens Galvin