Women tell why they want to have babies for others

Press, 10 November 1981, Page 9

Women tell why they want to have babies for others

NZPA Whittier, California Money, curiosity, and a desire to help are why some women are willing to bear children for others, say three women who have volunteered to be surrogate parents. Speaking at a symposium on surrogate parenting at the Whittier College school of law in California, the women told an audience of 240 why they would agree to be artifically inseminated by someone else’s husband and bear a child for an otherwise childless couple. “I want to be pregnant and experience pregnancy, but I'm not ready to have a family,” said Roberta Bartlett. aged 28, of Newport Beach. “To be able to do this

for a couple of months is wonderful. Everyone wins." The meeting, labelled the inaugural symposium on surrogate parenting, included discussions of the practice’s medical, legal, religious, and ethical implications. "We’re looking for a stable person, who thoroughly understands what they are undertaking and is mentally healthy and strong," said a psychologist, Nina Kellogg, in explaining what sort of woman was sought to be a surrogate mother. Ms Kellogg is a member of the board of directors of the Surrogate Parent Foundation, which was established last January in north Hollywood. Miss Bartlett is one of the surrogate mothers still to be matched with a couple, who

will pay her from SUSSOOO to SUSIO.OOO to bear their, child. Karen Smith of Pasadena, a divorced mother of two who also addressed the meeting, said she decided to become a surrogate so she could afford to put her five-year-old daughter in private school. Ms Smith said she "enjoys being pregnant and loves it” but had not remarried and was not “ready to get up again every three hours with the bottle." She recently miscarried a child she was carrying as a surrogate but planned to try again with the same couple, who wanted to be in the delivery room with her. “I want to give it to them so badly." she said. “It’s important for people to

understand what it means emotionally not to be able to have children."