Surrogate mother says gay couple deserve their twins

A SURROGATE mother carrying twins for a British millionaire gay couple denied she was doing it for money yesterday and said she believed they were deserving parents.

Rosalind Bellamy, an American who has four children, told GMTV: "I do not think I am defying nature at all for a pocketing of money. I am helping some people become parents and I know I am really helping someone that is very, very deserving of having children."

Barrie Drewitt, 30, and Tony Barlow, 35, have spent pounds 200,000 on the test- tube boy and girl, due in December, and say they want to have more children.

Mrs Bellamy, who lives in California, said: "They have wanted children for some time and they are definitely happy people and are enjoying the pregnancy tremendously."

She said there would be no question the children would lack female influences in their lives just because their parents were both men. "Children all through their life need certain role models and I know they are going to have the right kind of role models.

"They have lots of aunts in their families, lots of grandmothers and they are also going to know who I am and who the egg donor is, so they are definitely going to be having role models as women.

"Children lose their parents all the time growing up. Husbands and wives die all the time and families seem to be able to pull themselves together and have a stable life. So I don't think you have to have a mother or have to have a father. I know that one sex can make great parents just as well as both sexes."

Mrs Bellamy said she was proud of her own boys, aged 15, 14, 10 and 8, who had been very supportive of her actions.

She has been a surrogate once before, to twin boys. The eggs were donated by another woman.

Mr Drewitt and Mr Barlow have chosen names - Aspen and Saffron - for the babies, who will be born in the United States. The couple, from Chelmsford, Essex, have been together for 11 years and recently sold the controlling interest in their drug-testing company for pounds 4m. Both were brought up on housing estates in Manchester and say their children will want for nothing.

Mr Drewitt, a former nurse, said: "We're in a long-term, stable relationship and we've got a strong extended family. Nobody can say that these children aren't wanted."

Mr Barlow said they would keep in touch with the surrogate mother.

"We have got a house in Beverly Hills, so we'll take the children on holiday there every year. We want them to know where they have come from."

The couple tried both adoption and artificial insemination before turning to surrogacy in the United States, where the laws are more relaxed for gay and lesbian partners.