Tug of War Keeps Custody Battle Over Surrogate Child Alive

A crisp morning chill fills the autumn air as the father carries his raven-haired daughter, still sleepy and swaddled in a blanket, from his house to the waiting car. A short time later, Lydia Michelle’s big eyes are open wide and she sucks on a bottle as the father hands her to a woman, her mother, at the door to a National City apartment. Not a word, not a glance is exchanged between the father and mother.

The stony ritual, which takes place five mornings most weeks, represents the current status of one of the crudest surrogate mother disputes that has surfaced to date: the anguishing case of Lydia Michelle Haro, the 2 1/2-year-old daughter of Mario Haro, a teacher who lives with his wife in relative working-class comfort in Chula Vista, and Alejandra Arellano Munoz, a young, uneducated single mother from Mexico who has two other small children and no independent means of support.

While it’s just one of hundreds of surrogate mother births that have occurred in the United States in the past decade, the case of Lydia Michelle has attracted national prominence--and, in many quarters, outrage. It is the only known instance of a Third World woman serving as a surrogate for a U. S. couple, an awkward arrangement that many fear could be a portent of a frightening trend toward exploitation, especially as ever more sophisticated forms of embryo transfer and other “birthing” methods are developed.

‘Potential for Abuse’

“I think this does show the potential for the abuse of Third World women and all poor women in the future,” said Gena Corea, a Boston author who has written critically of surrogate motherhood and has befriended the natural mother in the San Diego case.

Arellano Munoz, a soft-spoken, 22-year-old from a small town near Mazatlan, a former cleaning woman with a third-grade education who was smuggled into the United States as an illegal alien and has fought hard--and against long odds--to maintain contact with her child, has emerged as a kind of vivid symbol of the dangers of commercial surrogacy. The practice’s many opponents have embraced her cause.

“It’s only a matter of time before we start crossing more borders and start hiring Third World breeders for families in this country,” said Matt Pawa, legislative liaison for the National Coalition Against Surrogacy, a Washington-based advocacy group that has followed Arellano Munoz’s case.

For their part, the Haros--Mario and his wife, Nattie, who were themselves born in Mexico--portray the surrogate arrangement as their desperate and heartfelt attempt to ease the pain of infertility through the assistance of a family member. Arellano Munoz is a cousin of Nattie Haro, a fact that has added a level of complexity. Exploitation, they maintain, was not on their minds.

“I don’t think people realize how difficult it is, how lonely it can be not to have children,” said Mario Haro, 35, a one-time field worker in the San Joaquin Valley who earned a college degree and now teaches at an area junior high school. “We just want what’s best for Lydia.”

Divided Family

While the dispute has been out of the public spotlight for the past year, the harsh feelings it has engendered continue to inspire fervent debate and divide family members in both Mexico and the United States.

Currently, a kind of uneasy truce reigns as part of a court-ordered joint-custody arrangement, in which Lydia Michelle spends parts of five days each week with her natural mother. But neither side is completely pleased. The Haro family, in particular, maintains that the current status quo is untenable on a long-term basis, particularly as Lydia Michelle nears school age.

Next July, shortly after Lydia Michelle’s third birthday, a family court hearing will be held in San Diego to determine the child’s immediate future. With the original handwritten surrogate “contract” largely discredited--unlike circumstances in many other surrogate disputes--the question of Lydia Michelle’s future has evolved from the heady realm of potentially precedent-setting case law into the more prosaic arena of bitter and complicated custody battles.

Both sides offer impassioned claims, reams of legal arguments and differing interpretations of various psychological evaluations. Both sides maintain they do not mean to exclude either parent from access to the child, although there even is dispute about that point.

In fact, there is precious little agreement, except on one issue: The continued hostility cannot be good for Lydia Michelle.

Which Environment Best

Behind it all, supporters of Arellano Munoz see a fundamental, troubling question: Does a judge, or anyone, have a right to decide that Lydia Michelle would be better off in the Haro home simply because they are better off materially?

“I think their (the Haros’) position has been that they have more money, they’re more educated and therefore they have better parenting skills,” said Harvey E. Berman, a San Diego attorney who represented Arellano Munoz during court proceedings last year that ultimately resulted in the current shared-custody arrangement. “Fortunately, we don’t rate parents’ abilities by how much money they have.”

In response, the Haros, legal U. S. residents who are bilingual, say their claim has less to do with material wealth than with Arellano Munoz’s alleged inability to be a good parent--and their own possession of such parenting skills. During an interview at their home, the couple recited a series of criticisms of Arellano Munoz’s treatment of her children, accusing her broadly of not being a good parent. (She is the single mother of three girls, including Nayeli, 4; Lydia Michelle, 2; and Claudia, who was born last month.)

“If she could provide the right environment to care for Lydia, we would have let Lydia stay with her many years ago,” Mario Haro said as he cradled Lydia Michelle in his arms. “But we’ve seen that she’s not able to provide that care for her.”

Not so, say critics of the Haros. Psychological tests and other evidence submitted in court, they maintain, have shown that Arellano Munoz has been a dedicated parent for her older daughter, Nayeli. The court already examined the issue before awarding her partial custody, they note. The parenting argument is only a smoke screen, the mother’s supporters maintain. (Arellano Munoz herself declined to be interviewed for this account.)

‘Done a Fine Job’

“It’s quite clear that she has done a fine job with Nayeli, that Nayeli is a quite normal and well-adjusted child,” said Denise Moreno Ducheny, a San Diego attorney who now represents Arellano Munoz. “She doesn’t speak good English, but that’s not a criterion for good motherhood.”

While assailing Arellano Munoz’s abilities as a parent, the Haros also argue that Lydia Michelle would be better off in their four-bedroom home because of their relative prosperity and because of the more comfortable life style she would enjoy. Arellano Munoz and her daughters reside in a small National City apartment that she shares with several other women.

“I think she (Lydia) needs to be in a stable home, not bounding around,” said Nattie Haro, 38, who says she has quit her banking job to care full time for Lydia Michelle. “I wish that she would just give us custody. . . . She has two other children to keep her occupied.”

Such comments, others say, illustrate the Haros’ insensitivity to the plight of Arellano Munoz.

“They would like her to disappear,” said Corea, the Boston-based critic of surrogate motherhood and the author of “The Mother Machine,” a book about surrogacy and various new reproductive practices. “She was supposed to be a breeder, a package that would just deliver this baby and disappear. So it’s really inconvenient that there’s this human being here.”

That’s not the way it was at all, the Haros argue. The couple turned to surrogate motherhood in desperation, according to their account, when an aunt in Tijuana suggested it as an answer to their childless plight. Previously, they had met no success with in vitro fertilization, in which the ovum is fertilized outside the womb.

The aunt eventually put them in contact with her niece Arellano Munoz. She was brought across the border to the Haros’ residence and, in late 1985, she managed to inseminate herself artificially with Mario Haro’s sperm.

“Since everything was in the family, we never really thought that something bad would happen,” recalled Nattie Haro, who is the mother of a 20-year-old daughter from a previous marriage but is now unable to conceive after two failed pregnancies.

Contract Dispute

But something bad did happen. Arellano Munoz has since stated that the Haros duped her into thinking she would carry the embryo for only three weeks; she said she believed it would then be transplanted into Nattie Haro’s womb. The Haros have denied any deception.

As disagreements mounted, the Haros agreed to pay Arellano Munoz about $1,500--well below the $10,000 going rate for surrogate mothers, but, they said, all they could afford. A two-sentence, handwritten “contract” was eventually signed; the natural mother supposedly agreed to relinquish all rights to the child. (Later, the Haros abandoned an earlier argument that the handwritten document represented a legally binding contract.)

Late in her pregnancy, Arellano Munoz has since declared, she informed the Haros that she intended to keep the child. On June 25, 1986, she gave birth by Caesarean section to Lydia Michelle. Nattie Haro signed the birth certificate, according to court testimony, and the baby first lived with the Haros. After a lengthy court battle, a Superior Court judge last fall granted Arellano Munoz a dramatic expansion of her earlier court-ordered rights to be with her daughter, resulting in the current system whereby the girl is with her for parts of five days a week.

Now, Arellano Munoz lives simply and quietly in National City, relying on $50 in monthly child support from the Haros and other assistance provided by a church and others. She quit her job at a taco shop to give birth to her youngest. U. S. immigration authorities have granted her temporary legal status, vowing not to separate her from her child.

Despite the Haros’ contention that she is not a good parent, and despite her poverty, Arellano Munoz has pledged never to relinquish her rights to Lydia Michelle. Likewise, the Haros say the girl is an integral part of their family, and they have no intention of giving her up.