California Triplets at Center of Thorny Surrogacy Case, Pro-Life Debate

A set of newborn triplets are now being tended to in a California hospital, unaware of their place at the center of a complex legal battle that could have huge implications for surrogacy and parental rights.

The babies were delivered several weeks premature Monday night, according to a lawyer for Melissa Cook, the 47-year-old surrogate mother from Woodland Hills who refused the biological father’s demands that she have an abortion. That man, a deaf, 50-year-old postal worker from Georgia identified in court papers as “C.M.,” paid Cook to carry anonymously donated eggs he fertilized in the hopes of having children. But Cook, who describes herself as pro-life, refused to have an abortion, and is seeking parental rights.

“I’m healthy, I’m 28 weeks pregnant, the babies are doing great, the three little boys I have inside me,” Cook told Fox News outside court earlier this month before they were born.

In California, a gestational surrogate – a woman who carries a donor’s eggs – has no parental rights, but Cook is challenging the state’s surrogacy law in federal court, claiming it is unconstitutional.

“It’s an attempt to reduce women to an object, or a breeding animal,” charges Cook’s lawyer, Harold Cassidy, a nationally prominent pro-life and anti-surrogacy lawyer who is calling for a moratorium on surrogacy. (Read more from “California Triplets at Center of Thorny Surrogacy Case, Pro-Life Debate” HERE)

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