A Fine Gael local election candidate has spoken publicly of acting as a surrogate mother for two childless friends. Surrogacy of this kind is very rare compared with commercial surrogacy, or surrogacy where a couple pay a stranger ‘living expenses’ to have a child for them.
42-year-old Becky Loftus Dore, who is standing in the Kinnegad electoral area in the local elections on May 24th, is a mother of four children, and is currently 35 weeks pregnant with a baby boy intended for a couple she is friends with.
The child was conceived in vitro. This took place in Cyprus.
She warned others about the precarious nature of surrogacy in that the child will be born with no legal connection to either of the two people who intend to raise him. Moreover, even if the law changed, she cautioned: “You don’t know whether people are going to switch or change. A woman could form a bond and say ‘no, I want to keep it’.”
