Surrogate’s Spouse Not Father of Baby
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HACKENSACK, N. J. — The husband of a woman seeking to keep the child she bore for another couple could not have been the infant’s father, according to blood test results released in court papers Thursday.
Superior Court Judge Harvey R. Sorkow had ordered the paternity tests after Mary Beth Whitehead said her husband, Richard, may have fathered the child even though he had a vasectomy.
The tests, conducted by Roche Biomedical Laboratories Inc. of Burlington, N. C., showed that Whitehead is not the child’s father.
Mrs. Whitehead, 30, agreed to be artificially inseminated with the sperm of William Stern and to bear a child for $10,000. After the infant was born March 27, Whitehead changed her mind and has been fighting for custody of the girl, who is in the custody of Stern and his wife, Elizabeth.
Sorkow said he will decide today whether to require Mrs. Stern to undergo a fertility test to justify having contracted with a surrogate mother for a child.
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