With a simple trip to the store, Christa Nielsen and Kellie Gronski can put strangers in tears.

It always starts with people taking in Nielsen's expansive belly and asking the inevitable. Twin girls, she always answers. Due in October.

But they're not mine.

They belong to my friend here, Kellie, and her husband, Rob. I'm just the surrogate.

The ethical and moral tangles of reproductive rights have made for some tight national knots. But these two women can untie them over coffee.

The women, both 33, have been friends since sixth grade. They were college roommates who have stayed close, save for a two-year stretch when Gronski dropped out of touch.

Last summer, she called Nielsen to explain: She couldn't bear to attend another friend's baby shower. She had been trying for years to have a child, and two recent tries by her sister to be her surrogate had failed. Telling friends might ruin their baby news.

"When Kellie told me what she had been through," Nielsen said, "I couldn't imagine her not being a mom."

So the Issaquah mother of two offered to carry another.

"She wasn't asked," said Nielsen's husband, Dick. "She offered."

Gestational surrogacy "is an amazing commitment," she said. The needles. The drugs. The potential heartbreak.

The couples met last fall and made the arrangements. Nielsen would fly to Boulder for the implantation. Gronski would come to Issaquah for the last two months to help out. The babies would be covered by Nielsen's insurance until they were born, when Gronski would get a room in the same hospital and take over.

"Certain boundaries have to be established immediately," Nielsen said.

Nielsen's ovaries were shut down. She wore an estrogen patch to build up her uterine lining. Gronski's eggs were fertilized with her husband's sperm, and implanted. Nielsen got pregnant on the first try.

She explained to her kids — Trent, 6, and Ruby, 3 — there was something wrong with Gronski's tummy, and she was carrying the babies for her. Family members have been joyous and supportive. As for strangers, well ...

"I thought I wouldn't tell a lot of people," Nielsen said. "But I'm having twins. And it's good for people to know."

For while these babies represent a pact between two friends, they also represent the choices we all have about our bodies, our families — some of them in President Bush's sights.

No money will be exchanged, and not because Washington state prohibits it.

"This is about Christa's gift," Dick Nielsen said. "I always knew she was generous, but this has shown me, more than I knew, what she is about."

Said Gronski's husband, Rob May: "No matter what I do for the rest of my life, "I'll never be able to balance [Christa] doing this for me."

Nielsen shrugs it off.

"I don't think it's a huge deal," she said, "other than to give Kellie and Rob what they have always wanted."

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

She would do almost that for Ginny.