Britain’s ‘first gay dads’ now plan three more daughters using embryos from a Brazilian model
Britain’s ‘first gay dads’ are hoping to extend their family with three more daughters using an embryo sex selection process that is currently illegal in the UK.
Tony and Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, from Essex, already have four sons and a daughter. They made history back in 1999 when they became the first gay couple in the UK to become dads through surrogacy.
Now the multimillionaires plan to conceive triplets using spare embryos which remain stored in a US fertility clinic following the conception of their youngest children, twins Dallas and Jasper, six years ago.
They were created using the couple’s sperm and the eggs of a Brazilian model, who was reportedly paid £50,000 for them after the pair spotted her on a catwalk.
UK newspaper Metro reports that on announcing the plans, Barrie, a trained social worker, said “All our children are growing up so fast. My biological clock is ticking and I really would love to have more babies, as all too soon our children will be thinking about flying the nest.
“I need to have another princess in my life – or two or three. There’s way too much testosterone in our house with four boys, Tony and me.
“I feel like I need more babies because I’m selfish. But I can give my babies a good home and good upbringing”, he added.
Asked by her father how she felt about the idea in a video posted online, the couple’s current only daughter, Saffron, 17, appeared unimpressed. “I don’t agree with it because you’re getting old’, she said.
TV presenter Eamonn Holmes recently defended an interview that he conducted with the Drewitt-Barlows 16 years previously, which drew criticism after clips were re-aired as part of a documentary about the family.
In 2012 the couple said they planned to mount a legal challenge over the government’s decision to ban gay couples from marrying in the Church of England.
Last September, the world’s first biological ‘three-parent’ baby was born. The baby boy has two mothers and one father, as a surrogate egg was used with the mother’s nucleus. The procedure was carried out to ensure that the mother would not pass on Leigh syndrome, a fatal disorder that affects the developing nervous system.
Last year, a gay couple in the UK won a battle to have a baby girl conceived through surrogacy returned to them after the mother claimed she did not know the men were gay before she gave birth.
