A British woman who agreed to become a surrogate mother for an American couple is suing them for allegedly backing out of the deal because she is carrying twins.

Helen Beasley, 26, claims Californians Charles Wheeler and Martha Berman demanded she abort one of the foetuses because they only wanted one child.

When she refused, they allegedly refused to have anything more to do with her.

Miss Beasley, who is six months pregnant, wants to put the twins up for adoption. But under Californian law, parental rights in a surrogacy agreement go to the intended parents, not the surrogate mother.

Miss Beasley, a single woman from the Midlands, already has a nine-year- old son. The two of them arrived in the U.S. a week ago.

She said she could not afford to support the twins, so adopting them herself was not an option. But she claimed to feel very responsible for the babies.

'You can't help but get attached to them, and I just want the best for them,' she said last night. 'When they're born, what happens to them? I can't have them. I can't do anything with them. They're not mine.

'My ideal solution is that the babies are born here and I'm allowed to find new parents for them.

'They don't have to be mega rich or anything, just so that they want the children and they'll be around to watch them grow up.'

Miss Beasley, a legal secretary, said she had wanted to become a surrogate mother because she felt sorry for couples who could not have children.

She made contact with Mr Wheeler and Miss Berman, who are both San Francisco lawyers, last August over the Internet. They corresponded via e-mail for several weeks.

The couple told her they had been trying for six years to have another baby.

They agreed to pay her about £14,000, according to her American lawyer Theresa Erickson, and made an initial payment of £700.

A contract was signed in February and Miss Beasley underwent in-vitro fertilisation at the Zouves Fertility Center in Daly City, California, a month later.

She became pregnant using Mr Wheeler's sperm and eggs from a donor selected by the couple.

Everything seemed to be going well and she was looking forward to the birth in November.

Miss Beasley discovered she was carrying twins about eight weeks into the pregnancy and said she informed the couple soon afterwards.

Under the contract she had signed, Miss Beasley had agreed to abort additional foetuses if more than one egg was fertilised. She insists all those involved in the surrogacy had agreed that if such a situation arose, a decision on abortion would be made before the 12th week of her pregnancy.

She claims it was not until the end of the 13th week that the couple told her they had scheduled an appointment in San Francisco to abort one of the foetuses.

Fearing the procedure would endanger her own health, she refused to go through with it.

'No way was I going to put my health at risk when they had had all that time to sort it out,' she said.

'They knew about the twins from eight weeks, so I can't understand how it took them to 13 weeks to say "OK, we'd better make an appointment nowî.'

Miss Beasley claimed the couple were also unhappy after discovering that the egg donor had a weight problem.

After she made her stand, Miss Beasley said they refused to talk to her and she was contacted a week later by their lawyer.

Miss Beasley wants to give birth in California so that the couple will have legal responsibility for the children. Her lawyer has arranged for her and her son to stay in San Diego with friends.

She filed the lawsuits in San Diego County Superior Court on August 1, claiming breach of contract and misrepresentation.

It is the first legal case in California involving a couple who have decided they no longer want the babies being carried for them by a surrogate.

Mr Wheeler declined to comment yesterday, saying to do so would be a breach of the confidentiality provision of the surrogate contract.

Miss Berman failed to return calls made to her home and office.

Miss Beasley's parents, Frank and Ann Beasley, from Shrewsbury in Shropshire, were too distressed to talk about the situation, which they said had put enormous strain on the family.

But her grandparents, Bill Jeavons, 90, and his wife Violet, 83, also from Shrewsbury, said she was a 'nice, quiet Christian girl just trying to help a couple in America who could not have children'.

Mrs Jeavons said: 'I am too old to be getting involved in these sorts of things, but as her grandmother I will support her all I can.

'It came as a shock to hear what she was doing. She kept it very quiet. But what she does is her business.

'I do worry about how my daughter Ann will take all this. She is a churchgoer and is very upset. She tried to talk her out of it, but Helen's mind was made up.'

She said her granddaughter was a good mother to her son.

'Her decision not to have an abortion is her natural mother's instinct and I know she is against abortion,' she said. 'This is a terrible situation for her to be in.'