The dark truth of surrogacy: Fraud and selfish desires create children with 'no mother at all'

A set of twins born in New York in 2023 have lived in a foster home since birth because the Department of Social Services determined they had no mother at all and should be considered wards of the state.

MaryBeth Lewis awaited the arrival of twin babies — a boy and a girl — who were being carried by a surrogate in upstate New York. But there were problems. MaryBeth wasn't actually the biological mother of the babies, and her husband wasn't the biological father.

In fact, he was unaware that the two embryos he had asked her to discard had been implanted into a surrogate.

After hearing about the situation, the Department of Social Services determined that the twins had no mother at all and should be considered wards of the state. They were placed into a foster home immediately. Two years later, though they have never met the babies, MaryBeth and Bob Lewis are attempting to gain custody.

Key Takeaways:

• MaryBeth Lewis was in her 40s and the mother of five daughters when she decided she wanted more children. She and her husband used IVF to welcome five more children.

• In her 50s with 10 biological children, MaryBeth decided to purchase donor eggs and donor sperm to create embryos who were not biologically related to either her or her husband. After giving birth to three of those children, there were two more embryos MaryBeth wanted to implant. But her doctor and her husband both said no; by that time, MaryBeth was 65 years old.

• Without her husband's knowledge, she hired a surrogate and spent $160,000 having the two embryos implanted into the surrogate's uterus. When her husband found out, a judge refused to allow the couple to have parentage rights to the babies, and upon their births, they became wards of the state.

• Now two years old, the twins have been with the same foster parents since birth. Those foster parents hope to adopt them, but the Lewises are fighting to get custody of the babies.

• The case highlights the tragic and unjust effects of IVF and surrogacy: 'parentless' children created to fulfill the desires of adults.

The Details:

The New York Times reported on the Lewises, a wealthy couple who had five daughters naturally. But with Bob traveling frequently for his work as a pilot and their daughters growing up, a 40-something MaryBeth "decided she wanted another baby."

The couple used IVF, creating embryos that were biologically related to them. Five of those embryos were successfully implanted into MaryBeth's womb and survived to birth. But with 10 children born — and at 55 years old — MaryBeth wanted still more children. And she decided she was willing to break the law to get them.

A 'fresh batch' of babies

After the couple's second daughter, Kristina — who had struggled with addiction and bipolar disorder — suffered a heart attack and required full-time care in a facility, MaryBeth was more motivated to have another baby. But there were no more embryos, so she bought donor sperm and donor eggs and created "a fresh batch" of babies, reported The Times.

"The children would not be genetically related to MaryBeth or Bob, but that didn’t bother her. She would carry them herself and raise them as Lewises," The Times wrote.

Using the 'donor' created embryos, in 2016, at the age of 59, MaryBeth gave birth to twins, babies 11 and 12, and in 2019, they announced baby number 13 was on the way.

But this pregnancy had been planned by MaryBeth — not by Bob. MaryBeth had gone behind his back and secretly implanted two embryos, one of whom didn't survive.

She didn't tell him until she was 12 weeks pregnant, justifying her actions by saying, "He originally signed for all this stuff," and equivocated that he had made 'purchases' without her knowledge, too.

After baby 13 was born, Bob was done, but not MaryBeth.

Turning to secret surrogacy

At age 65, with two more non-biological embryos still frozen, MaryBeth went to her doctor to discuss implanting those embryos, but he refused. Her six C-sections had left a scar that was putting her life and the babies' lives at risk.

The Times reported that MaryBeth is a "practicing Catholic," but the Catholic Church definitively stands against IVF, and in creating all of these babies, MaryBeth had been going against Church teachings.

Now, with two embryos frozen, she felt that discarding them "would be almost tantamount to murder," wrote The Times. But it wouldn't have been almost the same as murder; it would have been exactly the same — except it would have been legal.

Determined not to destroy the embryos, MaryBeth turned to surrogacy, paying $160,000.

In New York, both spouses must sign surrogacy paperwork, but after years of Bob traveling for work, MaryBeth had gotten good at forging his signature, and he had granted her power of attorney.

So in February 2023, she forged Bob's signature on the surrogacy contract, and the process moved forward. She thought perhaps the surrogate would miscarry and that would be that. Instead, both embryos survived. The Times reported:

MaryBeth told no one. There were more papers to sign, more signatures to forge.

Mixed with her anxiety was pure delight. Even though she had a basement full of hand-me-downs, MaryBeth ordered new baby clothes, car seats and a playpen. She wanted to feel the rush of new motherhood again.

When Bob asked about the packages, she said they were for their daughter Liz, who was now pregnant herself.

In September 2023, MaryBeth logged into a court hearing on Zoom, told the judge that Bob was away for work, and then logged into another Zoom account, keeping the camera off and pretending to be Bob. She would grunt when someone asked "Bob" a question.

But Judge Chauncey J. Watches was skeptical of MaryBeth, ordered the Department of Social Services to conduct a home study, and appointed legal counsel to the preborn babies. Ultimately, MaryBeth and an unaware Bob were granted parentage of the preborn babies.

MaryBeth had made it this far, but it was about to come crashing down.

No mother at all

One day, her phone rang, and on the other end, Bob yelled, "What did you do?"

All the legal documents and letters had been sent to a post office box to hide the pregnancy from Bob, but the judge's parentage order had been sent to their house, and Bob had gotten the mail. He called MaryBeth's lawyer, who — having been duped into believing Bob had signed the paperwork and been on the Zoom call — reported MaryBeth for fraud.

The Times noted, "nearly 100 miles away in Steuben County, the court rescinded MaryBeth and Bob’s parentage order." The Department of Social Services soon argued that the twins should be considered wards of the state.

"Social Services laid out its case: The sperm and egg donors had waived their rights to any offspring. The surrogate, just weeks away from giving birth, did not want the children."

The Times noted (emphasis added):

Without a parentage order, MaryBeth was not their mother. In fact, they had no mother at all.

Under New York law, the babies, not yet born, had no parents.

The Lewises' marriage began to crumble amid legal fees and emotional blowups. But then, Bob had a change of heart. He decided to raise the babies — the biological siblings of their younger three children — with MaryBeth, who bought domperidone (a nausea medication not approved in the US that has an off-label use for stimulating breast milk production). She began pumping and freezing breast milk for babies to whom she had no legal right.

Then, in the fall of 2023, the babies were born.

When MaryBeth arrived at the hospital, she was not allowed to see the babies or take them home. Her new attorney, Timothy J. Hennessy, argued to the judge, "I don't know why the county is so hellbent on bastardizing these children." But Scott Fierro, the attorney for Social Services, argued that MaryBeth should not get the babies based on her criminal conduct.

The babies were placed in a foster home. For two years, they have remained with their foster parents, who have filed for adoption.

Why It Matters:

Despite having a biological mother, a biological father, a surrogate mother, an intended mother, and an intended father (who was kept in the dark about their existence), their foster parents are the only parents the twins have ever known.

But on October 20, just before the twins' second birthday, a judge ruled that MaryBeth and Bob were the legal parents of the babies, and they should be 'reunified' with them — adults they have never met, who are not biologically related to them, and who didn't even know the children's names.

But for MaryBeth, that didn't matter; she planned to change the toddlers' names anyway.

Despite the ruling, the twins currently remain with their foster parents, and the next hearing is scheduled for late November. MaryBeth still has pending criminal charges against her, though her lawyers believe she can avoid prison time.

She maintains that the twins are her babies and she should have them.

“I saved these embryos from being destroyed,” she said. “I saved my children.”

This is a prime example of how IVF and surrogacy commodify children and turn them from gifts into products.

The Bottom Line:

Two babies, born through the efforts of multiple adults, three of whom may have financially profited from their existence (the sperm donor, the egg donor, and the surrogate), were deemed to have no parents whatsoever. Now it seems they will be removed from the only family they have known, based on the desires of adults.

These children have already experienced trauma in being separated from the surrogate, whose heartbeat and voice they already knew. Now, they risk being even further traumatized when separated from the parents with whom they have bonded since birth.

IVF and surrogacy create injustice; they do not remedy it.