Elderly Mother Of 13 Tries For One More, Reportedly Racks Up Felony Charges

MaryBeth Lewis wanted another baby. 

Then 65 years old, the mother of 13 had run out of embryos long ago. She had given birth for a final time, aged 62, to a child procured by donor sperm and donor eggs, The New York Times Magazine (NYT) reports. (The NYT Magazine is included with the Sunday edition of the NYT and typically features longer articles than the paper.)

So Lewis did what any woman desperate to be a mother, again, would do. She reportedly crafted a plan to obtain a child through surrogacy, allegedly deceiving her husband, an in vitro fertilization (I.V.F.) clinic, and a New York judge in the process. 

Authorities initially charged Lewis, now 68, with 30 criminal counts, according to the NYT Magazine. Those reportedly included forgery, falsifying business records, perjury, and attempted-kidnapping. 

Before her legal troubles began, Lewis was a young woman who wanted a big family. She had five children — “the Originals.” All were girls. 

Lewis pursued I.V.F. in her mid-40s, the NYT Magazine reports. Her husband, Bob Lewis, traveled half the month for work, and her children were rapidly growing up.

It’s pretty wild that there are fertility clinics and surrogacy agencies willing to facilitate stuff like this. https://t.co/eyVa43UTN6

— Rosie Gray (@RosieGray) November 3, 2025

“This is empty,” she felt, according to the NYT Magazine. “I don’t like this at all.”

So babies 6 through 10 were born. But Lewis wasn’t done.

Lewis persisted in her quest to have babies “despite medical mishaps, miscarriages and raised eyebrows from friends.” And despite, at times, her husband’s ignorance. 

MaryBeth Lewis had “gone behind” Bob Lewis’ back and “secretly implanted two more embryos” (her 11th and 12th children), according to the NYT Magazine. MaryBeth Lewis waited “until [Bob Lewis] was in a good mood, finally telling him at 12 weeks.” 

“He originally signed for all this stuff,” MaryBeth Lewis tells the NYT Magazine, referring to her husband’s initial purchase of the embryos. “But he wasn’t thrilled, let me put it that way.” (RELATED: Surprise, Your IVF Baby Isn’t Even Related To You: Lawsuits Highlight Often ‘Unreported’ Fertility Errors)

And there were still embryos on ice. 

The couple was paying a $50 monthly fee to preserve their final frozen embryos at a fertility clinic in Syracuse, the NYT Magazine reports. 

Lewis “visited her OB-GYN and asked about implanting two more embryos. The uterine scar from her six C-sections was paper thin. Another pregnancy could rupture it and kill her. The doctor was adamant: No more babies.” 

Destroying the embryos was out of the question for Lewis, a practicing Catholic. “To remove them from liquid nitrogen and discard them, she felt, would be almost tantamount to murder.” 

Lewis’ faith evidently didn’t stop her from proceeding with in vitro fertilization (IVF) in the first place; the Catholic Church teaches that IVF is unequivocally an immoral act. 

As for giving the embryos to another couple, Lewis claims her husband opposed donation “because he didn’t want the genetic siblings of their three youngest children to be raised by strangers.”

Bob Lewis “doesn’t recall saying this,” according to the NYT Magazine, “but admits he had a bad memory.” This is not the sole discrepancy between the Lewises’ accounts. 

The reality is that few state laws govern the ethical concerns and potential harms of IVF gone wrong. See the Atlantic story of the woman whose embryos were used for research without her permission. She has no legal recourse as no laws prohibit this. Or examples in CA, AL, & AR. pic.twitter.com/9qrvQ3XyKJ

— Emma Waters (@emlwaters) June 21, 2024

MaryBeth Lewis turned to surrogacy. Bob Lewis did not. 

MaryBeth Lewis says her husband “initially went along with the surrogacy plan,” according to the NYT Magazine. Bob Lewis denies this claim.

After a heated argument, MaryBeth Lewis admits, “That’s when I got a little bonko.” 

She reportedly forged Bob Lewis’ signature on surrogacy paperwork, telling the NYT Magazine, “I got pretty good at his signature” over the years. MaryBeth Lewis’ brother-in-law allegedly notarized the contract without Bob Lewis’s presence.

Bob Lewis was none the wiser. Three weeks after embryo implantation, MaryBeth Lewis learned the surrogate was pregnant with twins. 

“There was many a time where I wanted to talk to him,” MaryBeth Lewis tells the NYT Magazine. “You have to hit him in a good mood in order to talk to him.”

MaryBeth Lewis was racing a fast approaching deadline. To obtain custody of the twins — who were not conceived of her eggs, nor her husband’s sperm, and who were being carried to term by a different woman — she’d have to get a court’s stamp of approval.

New York passed the Child-Parent Security Act in 2021 “clarif[ying] issue of who is a parent [in surrogacy cases] and establish[ing] clear legal procedures which ensure that each child’s relationship to his or her parent(s) is legally recognized from birth.”

With eight weeks until the twins were due, MaryBeth Lewis appeared in court over Zoom. She reportedly “told the judge that her husband was away on a work trip in Japan. She logged on with a separate account for Bob and kept the camera turned off. When the judge addressed him, MaryBeth says she grunted in assent.” 

Judge Chauncey J. Watches took note of the odd circumstances before him, citing the Lewises’ advanced ages as unusual, according to the NYT magazine. (RELATED: ‘War Against Pro-Lifers’: Inside Suspected Manifesto Of IVF Clinic Bomber)

He reportedly ordered the Department of Social Services to conduct a home study of the Lewis home and “appointed the unborn twins their own legal counsel.” 

Watches eventually signed the parentage order, according to the NYT magazine, conferring full parental rights to the Lewises. That order, unlike other legal correspondence racked up during the twins’ gestation, was sent directly to the Lewis house, where Bob Lewis discovered it. 

Bob Lewis reportedly contacted the attorney employed by his wife, who reportedly contacted Watches. 

“I just reported you,” MaryBeth Lewis recalls her husband telling her. “You’re going to get arrested.”

So began a custody battle spanning nearly two years. The twins were born in November 2023, according to the NYT Magazine. MaryBeth Lewis was reportedly charged with 30 counts of criminal behavior Dec. 7, 2023. 

The Department of Social Services argued the twins were “wards of the state.” The sperm and egg donors had waived their parental rights, the surrogate was uninterested in raising the twins, and MaryBeth Lewis did not have a valid parentage order.

Again: The Lewises were not the genetic parents of the twins. The twins were related to other Lewis children conceived of the same sperm and egg donors. (RELATED: ROOKE: There’s An Insidious New Plan Creeping In To End Humanity As We Know It)

This is such a heartbreaking read. Spoiler but if you’re willing to rip two toddlers you’ve never met and who aren’t related to you away from the people they call mommy and daddy? Sorry you’re incredibly selfish on top of everything else going on here. https://t.co/jMcYfBeG3l

— Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) November 2, 2025

Lewis rejected three plea deals. Then, her lawyers discovered procedural flaws in the case. Watches recused himself. A new judge, Matthew McCarthy, declared MaryBeth and Bob Lewis the legal parents of the children on Oct. 20, according to the NYT Magazine. The twins’ second birthday was just around the corner. 

Lewis still faced pending criminal charges as of October, the NYT Magazine reports. 

A question from one of Lewis’ friends, according to the NYT Magazine, summarizes the contradiction at the heart of the elderly mother’s actions: “If she’s that staunch of a Catholic, then if God was done having her have babies naturally, why not stop, rather than go this route of fertilizing?”

Lewis might’ve adopted, or contented herself with caring for her children and grandchildren. She apparently opted for a more selfish route. One which placed enormous strain on her husband, her existing children, two toddlers, their foster parents, the legal and foster systems, and herself. 

Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatSandovalDC