HUDSON COUNTY — According to the New York Times, a woman named Angelia Robinson has been declared the legal mother of twins for whom she was a surrogate on behalf of her brother, Donald Robinson Hollingsworth, and his husband, Sean Hollingsworth. The Hollingsworths live in Jersey City.
Sean’s sperm was used, along with a donor egg, and Angelia carried the twins.
The Times notes, “The ruling gives the woman, who carried the babies in an arrangement with her brother and his male spouse, the right to seek primary custody of the children at a trial in the spring. The case illustrates the legal complexities of gestational surrogacy, in which a woman carries unrelated embryos created in a petri dish.”
The Times notes, “The girls were born in October 2006 and went to live with the Hollingsworths at their home in Jersey City. But in March 2007 Ms. Robinson filed a lawsuit seeking custody, alleging that she had been coerced into the arrangement.
“Judge Francis B. Schultz of Superior Court, who ruled in the case in Hudson County, N.J., relied heavily on the precedent established by the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1988 in the case of Baby M. The surrogate in that case, Mary Beth Whitehead, carried her own genetic child for another couple after artificial insemination with the man’s sperm.”
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