High Court rules baby to be returned to gay couple
A gay couple have won a battle to have a baby girl conceived through surrogacy returned to them.
The couple said they had made a surrogacy agreement with the mother – but she said they has agreed she was to be the baby’s main parent.
The judgement was made earlier this year but only recently published, and made clear that the baby should be removed from the mother and returned to the fathers. The judge said it would be in the child’s “best interests” to be returned to her fathers, and described them as “clearly devoted” to each other.
The child’s biological father and the mother had met as teenagers in Romania, and reportedly agreed that, while the mother would be involved in the child’s life, the two men would be the primary parents.
The judge said the woman’s evidence had used “stereotypical images and descriptions of gay men” and “insinuated that gay men in same-sex relationships behave in a sexually disinhibited manner” as well as “sexually disloyal to each other”. She had also interrupted when the men were speaking, and attempted to disrupt the case.
Ms Justice Russell said: “[She] has consistently done all she can to minimise the role that [the father] had in the child’s life and to control and curtail his contact with his daughter.
“Far from being a child that she conceived with her good friend, as she describes it, her actions have always been of a woman determined to treat the child as solely her own.
“[She] deliberately misled the father and his partner about her intention or changed her mind as the pregnancy progressed.”
