New Parents Found for Surrogate’s Twins

SAN FRANCISCO — A California couple embroiled in a surrogate parent lawsuit has lined up another would-be family for twins that a British woman is carrying, according to the couple’s lawyer.

Helen Beasley, now 25 weeks pregnant, sued Charles Wheeler and Martha Berman, alleging that the Berkeley couple had backed out of a pregnancy deal and abandoned her after Beasley refused to abort one of the twins.

On Sunday, the couple’s lawyer, Diane Michelsen, said another set of American parents has been found to take over the surrogacy contract.

“There has been and continues to be a fully qualified couple who is ready, willing and able to immediately accept the custody of the children,” she said.

Michelsen would not say why her clients do not want the babies now, after going to the trouble and expense of having the husband’s sperm and a donor egg implanted in the surrogate mother’s womb.

“Family building is a very private matter,” she said.

Michelsen also denied that anyone ordered Beasley, 26, to abort one of the twins. She said it was more of a “request,” as outlined in the contract, which called for a “selective reduction” if Beasley became pregnant with more than one baby.

Michelsen, who would not identify the adoptive couple, said there was “never any possibility” that the twins would be abandoned.

Beasley met Wheeler and Berman a year ago over the Internet on a Web site for surrogate parents.

The couple agreed to pay her $19,000 to bear their child, according to court documents, and she underwent in-vitro fertilization in California in March.