Mary Beth Whitehead

Mary Beth Whitehead-Gould, four months pregnant with her fifth child, throws up in the bathroom as the sun goes down. "Morning sickness, day and night, with all my babies," she says when she's finished. "It's a cross I have to bear." Her fourth child, 9-month-old Austin, crawls on the kitchen floor with the Shetland sheep dogs. Her first child, 14-year-old Ryan, skateboards in the street outside.

The surrogate mother in the celebrated Baby M case rose to the defense of Anna L. Johnson on Friday, saying she has counseled the Orange County woman by phone and believes she is simply fighting to keep what is rightfully hers. "I'll do anything in my power to help her keep her child even if that means flying to California and testifying for her," Mary Beth Whitehead-Gould said from her home in Long Island, N.Y. "I know the pain of not having the child is very great."

I've heard enough about "poor" Mary Beth Whitehead. She wasn't forced to become a surrogate mother. She made a commitment and signed a contract; she is ethically and legally bound to fulfill its terms ("Surrogate Mothers: 'Let's Stop This' " by Elizabeth Mehren, Sept. 1). I do feel a great deal of sympathy for the parents of "Baby M." Let us not forget there is also a biological father involved here, and his wife who was unable to have a child of her own--not to mention the child, who has been subjected to what must be a very confusing and likely painful start to her life.

This woman is an emotional 5-year-old. She volunteered to become a surrogate mother because she wanted someone to admire her. She took little Melissa because she wanted that cute little baby. She put the child through the publicity of a court trial because she wanted attention. She co-wrote a book that will follow her daughter through her life because she wanted the money and publicity. She became pregnant by Gould because she wanted another baby.

The Case of Baby M is not a contract case. This is a custody case where the court's concern should be for the child. The mother is Mary Beth Whitehead. The father is William Stern. The issue is what arrangement for parenting between father and mother will best serve the child. JAMES H. EGLY Laguna Beach

Surrogate mother Mary Beth Whitehead and her husband today received an uncontested divorce, with Whitehead saying they were still in love but were unable to maintain their marriage because of the pressures of the celebrated Baby M custody case. The divorce clears the way for Whitehead, who is pregnant with her fourth child, to marry the live-in boyfriend who fathered it.

Surrogate mother Mary Beth Whitehead, citing stress from her losing battle for custody of the child she bore under contract, has separated from her husband, her attorney said. The lawyer, Harold Cassidy, said in a statement that the couple have no immediate intention of reuniting. Whitehead, 30, was stripped of her parental rights in the landmark Baby M case when a New Jersey judge ruled in March that the contract she had signed with William and Elizabeth Stern was valid.

Mary Beth Whitehead-Gould, four months pregnant with her fifth child, throws up in the bathroom as the sun goes down. "Morning sickness, day and night, with all my babies," she says when she's finished. "It's a cross I have to bear." Her fourth child, 9-month-old Austin, crawls on the kitchen floor with the Shetland sheep dogs. Her first child, 14-year-old Ryan, skateboards in the street outside.

A judge on Wednesday granted surrogate mother Mary Beth Whitehead-Gould unsupervised, weekly visits with the daughter she bore under a $10,000 contract. Both sides said they would not appeal the ruling, and Superior Court Judge Birger M. Sween urged an end to the court fight over Baby M, which sparked a world debate on parental rights and reproductive technology.

Mary Beth Whitehead-Gould admitted that she sold the story of her wedding and photos of Baby M, the child she bore under a surrogate motherhood contract, to a tabloid for $20,000 last November. Whitehead-Gould told a judge at a visitation hearing in Hackensack, N.J., that she knew there would be widespread interest in her marriage to her second husband, New York accountant Dean Gould, and that she hoped the agreement with Star magazine would keep other reporters away.

The mood at the Center for Surrogate Parenting Inc. in Beverly Hills was defiant Wednesday in the wake of the New Jersey Supreme Court's ruling outlawing commercial surrogate mother contracts in that state. "Couples (who want children) are still coming to us and it's not going to stop," said William Handel, the center's director and an activist attorney in the controversial fields of surrogate parenting and reproductive technologies.