A 50-year-old woman in Mexico has given birth to her own grandchild after she stepped in as a surrogate to carry her homosexual son’s baby.
The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, said her son Jorge, a 31-year-old businessman, was yearning for a baby so she offered him the use of her womb.
But now the 50-year-old admits she feels “strange” because she doesn’t feel like a mother or a grandmother.
Confused
The baby was conceived by in vitro fertilisation (IVF) using an ovum donated by a friend, and Jorge’s sperm fertilised it in a laboratory before it was transplanted inside his mother.
The baby was born on 1 November and is currently being nursed by the 50-year-old woman.
“I don’t feel like a mother nor like a grandmother,” she told Reforma, a Mexico City newspaper.
Strange
“When they say ‘mother’ to me I feel strange, and when they say ‘grandmother’ also,” she said.
“I mean, he was my first grandson, and I don’t feel that way because at the same time he is my fourth son.”
The family say they have documented the circumstances of the birth so that the child, whose name is Dario, will someday know the truth about his origins.
Pitfalls
Currently in England two children are at the centre of a tug-of-war between a homosexual father and a lesbian mother in a legal case highlighting the pitfalls of artificial insemination.
The children’s mother and her lesbian civil partner claim that they are the main carers and that the children should live with them, with more limited contact with their father.
But the father disputes this. In 1999 the man, who is now 51-years-old, placed an advert in a prominent homosexual magazine saying that he wanted to be a father.
Accused
The lesbian couple replied to his advert and two children, who are now aged nine and seven, were conceived through artificial insemination.
But since then the father has been accused of trying to marginalise the mother’s lesbian partner.
Alex Verdan QC, the father’s barrister, argued that his client had always been clear that he wanted to be involved in the children’s lives and upbringing.
Disaster
Family campaigners have warned that the case highlights the damage that can be done to children conceived through artificial insemination.
Norman Wells, director of the Family Education Trust, said: “It’s always a recipe for disaster to try and create children to order by artificial means to satisfy the desires of natural parents who are unrelated and lack a shared commitment to parenting.”
