Britain's 'first gay surrogate dads' want girl triplets via sex selection process illegal in UK

Britain’s first gay couple to father children through surrogacy have sparked heated debate over their plans to have have triplet daughters via a sex-selection process that is illegal in the UK.

Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow want three girls to add to their four sons and a daughter. They plan to conceive the triplets through embryo sex selection, and will do so in the US, where the practice is legal.

The couple’s youngest children, six-year-old twins Jasper and Dallas, were conceived thanks to a batch of embryos, of which there are still ten remaining in a Californian fertility clinic.

They first became fathers in 1999 Credit: rob bodman

The embryos were created using the couple’s sperm and the eggs of a Brazilian model. She was paid £50,000 by the couple for her eggs after they spotted her on a catwalk.

Barrie outlined the couple’s plan to pick the female embryos from those ten. They will then be implanted in the womb of a surrogate mother.

“This is baby trafficking, a skewing of the natural order,” said a spokeswoman for Christian Concern. “Children are a blessing and a gift, not objects that we select from a showroom.”

Lisa Ann Magerman, an obstetrics blogger and nurse, raised safety concerns. “Triplet pregnancies are very high-risk to begin with,” she said “Sex selection signals they care more about balanced numbers than four lives.”

Triplet pregnancies are very high-risk to begin with. Sex selection signals they care more about balanced numbers than four livesLisa Ann Magerman, obstetrics blogger and nurse

But not all observers are against the practice of sex selection. In a report into the ethics of gender preference, Stephen Wilkinson, a professor of bioethics at Lancaster, said: “We didn't find any ethical arguments sufficient to justify a blanket ban on these people seeking sex selection.”

There is “too much testosterone” in the Drewitt-Barlow household, said Barrie, adding that he was not too old to be a father again. “I need to have another princess in my life â€" or two or three,” he told newspapers.

The Drewitt-Barlows, who live in Essex,  first became fathers in 1999. Each of them fertilised an egg from the same woman, resulting in the birth, thanks to a surrogate mother, of Saffron and Aspen, half-siblings who are both now 17.

They were followed by Orlando, 13, and then Jasper and Dallas. Saffron told newspapers that her fathers are “way too old” for more children.

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