Baby M

In March 1984, Mary Beth Whitehead responded to an ad placed by the Infertility Center of New York in the Asbury Park Press seeking women willing to help infertile couples have children. She was a high school drop-out who had married Richard Whitehead, a waste collector, with whom she had two children, Ryan and Tuesday.

Elizabeth "Betsy" Stern was not technically infertile, but had multiple sclerosis and was concerned about the potential health implications of pregnancy, including temporary paralysis.

William "Bill" Stern and Mary Beth Whitehead entered into a "surrogacy contract," according to which Mary Beth would be inseminated with Bill's sperm, bring the pregnancy to term, and relinquish her parental rights in favor of Bill's wife, Betsy. The Sterns reportedly made their choice simply by looking at her picture.

According to later terminology, Mary Beth would be considered a traditional surrogate, as opposed to a gestational surrogate, because she was the genetic mother of the child. At the time, the technology for gestational surrogacy was not yet in common use.

On March 27, 1986, Mary Beth gave birth to a daughter, who she named Sara Elizabeth Whitehead. 3 days later, Mary Beth handed the baby over to Betsy and Bill, who renamed her Melissa Elizabeth Stern. However, within 24 hours of transferring physical custody to the Sterns, Mary Beth went to them and demanded that the baby be given back to her, allegedly threatening suicide. Mary Beth subsequently refused to return baby Melissa to the Sterns and left New Jersey, taking the infant with her. The Sterns had the Whitehead family's bank accounts frozen and sought warrants for their arrest.

On March 31, 1987, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Harvey R. Sorkow formally validated the surrogacy contract and awarded custody of Baby M to the Sterns under a "best interest of the child analysis".

On February 3, 1988, however, the Supreme Court of New Jersey, led by Chief Justice Robert Wilentz, invalidated surrogacy contracts as against public policy but in dicta affirmed the trial court's use of a "best interest of the child" analysis and remanded the case to family court. On remand, the lower court awarded custody to the Sterns and Whitehead was given visitation rights.

The case attracted much attention as it demonstrated that the possibilities of third party reproduction raise novel legal and social questions about the meaning of parenthood and the possibility of contracting around issues of pregnancy and childbirth.

Among other points of contention, feminists argued about whether a woman's basic human right to make decisions about her own body implied the ability to contract away parental rights to a child born to her, or whether recognizing such a right would entail too great risks of exploitation.

The New Jersey court's finding that no contract can alter the legal position of a woman who bears a child as that child's mother seemed to settle the question of the status of surrogacy contracts in America, at least until technological advances permitting gestational surrogacy—in which a woman can bear and birth a child to whom she has no genetic relation—reopened the question in many jurisdictions.

At least in New Jersey, however, the Baby M. ruling continues as precedent. In 2009, New Jersey Superior Court ruled that In re Baby M applies to gestational surrogacy as well as traditional surrogacy cases, in A.G.R. v. D.R.H & S.H.. The intended parents were a homosexual male couple. They created an embryo using an anonymous donor ovum and the sperm of one of the husbands. The sister of the other husband carried the embryo to term and originally delivered the child to her brother and his husband, but a year later asserted her own parental rights even though she was not genetically related to the child. Judge Francis Schultz relied on In re Baby M to recognize the gestational mother as the child's legal mother. However, a later ruling in 2011 awarded full custody to the biological father.

After reaching the age of maturity in March 2004, Melissa Stern legally terminated Mary Beth's parental rights and formalized Elizabeth's maternity through adoption proceedings. When the controversy died down, Whitehead divorced her husband, remarried to Dean Gould, and had two more children, Austin and Morgan.

"I love my family very much and am very happy to be with them," Melissa told a reporter for the New Jersey Monthly, referring to the Sterns in 2004. "I'm very happy I ended up with them. I love them, they're my best friends in the whole world, and that's all I have to say about it."

The biological mother, Ms. Whitehead, wrote a book about her experience in 1989.

In January 2011, a British court ruled a woman who bore a daughter under an informal surrogate agreement with a childless couple would keep the baby.

An ABC Network miniseries, simply titled Baby M, was broadcast in May 1988. The miniseries starred JoBeth Williams as Mary Beth Whitehead, John Shea as William, Bruce Weitz as Mary Beth's husband Rick, Robin Strasser as Elizabeth and Dabney Coleman as Gary Skoloff. The miniseries received seven Emmy nominations, including Outstanding Miniseries, which it did not win. Williams, Shea, Weitz, and Coleman all received nominations for their performances, but only Shea won. Williams also was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance.

In 1989, Mary Beth Whitehead published her own book about her experiences, A Mother's Story: The Truth About the Baby M Case.

In 1988 artist Martha Rosler made the video "Born to be Sold: Martha Rosler Reads the Strange Case of Baby M".

Mary Beth Whitehead is referenced in the Seinfeld episode "The Bottle Deposit", when Jerry's mechanic (played by Brad Garrett) steals Jerry's car after he feels that Jerry isn't caring for it properly.