Three men in the UK who commissioned a surrogate to have triplets for them will all be named as “parents” on the birth certificate.
Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, his same-sex fiance Scott Hutchinson, and ex-husband Tony already have six children. Their bill for eggs, donor IVF and surrogacy exceeds one million pounds. Critics say the use of gametes in this way deliberately breaks the natural ties, and can deprive a child of either a mother or a father. Commercial surrogacy is banned in many countries on the grounds that it exploits low-income women and ‘commodifies’ children.
The triplets are set to be born in the UK next year after a surrogate in America was inseminated with three IVF embryo’s.
Two of the embryos – which have been kept frozen for 22 years – are the offspring of Barrie and Tony that are part of a group of embryos which produced their three eldest children Saffron, 22, Aspen, 22 and a son named Orlando, 17. ‘Surplus’ embryos are often destroyed in the end.
The third embryo is the biological twin of Barrie and Scott’s 15-month-old daughter Valentina.
Drewitt-Barlow and his former spouse previously became Europe’s first same-sex couple to use a surrogate after they went to court to be allowed to have same-sex parents on birth certificates in a historic case for LGBTQ+ families.
