Surrogate Mother Refuses to "Selectively Reduce" Twins.(Brief Article)

Twin unborn babies are at the center of a legal battle between their surrogate mother and the couple who paid her to carry the babies. But rather than fighting over which of them should keep the children, the two sides are feuding because the surrogate mother refused to kill one of the babies in a second-trimester abortion.

When they wrote the contract hiring a surrogate mother to carry their child to term, Californians Charles Wheeler and Martha Berman made sure they would only have to care for one baby. They added a clause that gave them the option of making the surrogate have a "selective-reduction" abortion if more than one child was conceived, Time magazine reported.

After an ultrasound examination showed that surrogate mother Helen Beasley was carrying twins, the couple demanded that she fly from her home in England to California to abort one of them, according to Time. Beasley was willing to go, but when the scheduled date of the abortion was delayed until after the 12th week of pregnancy, she decided it was too late and refused to have the abortion, according to Time.

At that point Beasley says that the couple and their lawyer presented her with the options of either aborting one baby as requested or terminating both and still getting paid, Time reported. "Basically they don't want two babies and although we did have it in the contract that if there was multiples we would reduce, they left it too late in arranging the appointment to reduce them," Beasley told the BBC. "I thought I just couldn't do it."

Beasley added that she was concerned that her own health would be put at risk with a second-trimester abortion. "There is a risk to the other baby as well," she told the ...