Chapter 9

Finding out about the English legal situation was more complicated. It was just as well that I waited or I might never have started.

My own solicitor could not begin to help me. What I was asking about was not precedented in English Law. He suggested a firm of specialists in family law in the west country, but they could not help. The case of the ‘gay dads’ had just made the headlines in the UK. I noticed a caption in one of the papers which read ‘One egg, two babies—but how many parents?’ Curious to know the answer, I made contact with the writer, a solicitor. We met. The ‘fun’ began.

While he could not advise me on any contractual arrangements in America, he was able to tell me what I needed to do to make sure that I was legally the father. English law in 2000 predated DNA testing, so the mother is the person who gives birth—even if she is not the biological mother. The father is the mother’s husband if she is married, even if he is not the biological father.

It defies the logic that DNA testing would provide, but it was within this imperfect framework that I had to arrange my life. Had I been a woman, the babies would have right of residence and would be British. Because I am a man, they would have neither of these advantages. Tina was married. Her husband had decamped two years before she and I made contact, abandoning her and her two sons, Matthew and Ryan. Before anything happened, she would need to be unmarried, so Tina had to get a divorce.

This was no sacrifice for Tina. Her husband had become a ‘dead-end dad’, as she called him. The problem was how to contact this vanished man. The instant divorce that I had assumed was the norm in the US turned out to be a myth in our case. It took some time for the various papers to be signed and for the legal wheels to turn. Absolutely nothing could happen until that moment. At least it gave Vivian, Tina and me the time to meet.

In her e-mail to me, Vivian looked forward to getting ‘aquatinted’. I thought it was an American pun. She told me later it was just bad spelling.

Tina had expressed her desire to fly, so I bought tickets for her to come over with Vivian. It was odd meeting them at Gatwick. There is no established etiquette for greeting the future mother of one’s surrogate children, but fortunately we established a good understanding from the start.

Tina had one major concern. ‘As a nurse, I see death on a daily basis. What happens if you die?’ she asked. She was eminently sensible and realistic. I knew this was no maverick. I was dealing with an intelligent woman whose head was firmly attached to her shoulders. I explained the role of a Foundation I had created as a charitable body to provide education to talented students not otherwise able to afford what organisations such a mine could provide and that I planned that one of its functions would be to oversee my offspring in the event of my early death.

I had many questions for her. The main one, of course, was to find out why she wanted to be a surrogate. I was still concerned about the headstrong, unconventional, sailing-close-to-the-wind impression I had been left with by Growing Generations. Tina was frank and direct. She had followed her instinct in wishing to work in a hospital, but she had seen marriage as a way to leave home, married early and unwisely and her life had been sidetracked. Here was a chance to become someone special, to do something out of the ordinary and thus to rise above the norm. She also liked being pregnant. There is little if any financial incentive. In a similar way to the UK system, the surrogate is reimbursed for expenses. These are basically the loss of her earnings. She would be paid what she would have earned in her regular job.

Good. Everything seemed so straightforward with her.

‘But would you do this with your own egg?’

‘No, I couldn’t give away my own child.’

‘How about having more than one child? What would you think about this’.

Here we were on less certain ground. In principle, Tina had no problem with having twins.

Vivian described how the egg donor would be stimulated with drugs to produce many eggs. These would be fertilised and a number would be implanted into the surrogate. If more than the desired number took, the excess could be reduced.

‘Reduction’. An innocent term. The baby, Vivian told us would ‘have a demise’—a gentle concept that hid a stark reality. ‘Basically’, she said, raising a fork to her lips at lunch in a fashionable Marlborough restaurant, ‘the one nearest the needle gets it through the heart.’

Having a demise was clearly more drastic than having a slight chill. Abortion is killing no matter how euphemistically it is dressed up.

Neither Tina nor I were comfortable with the idea of killing babies. We thought twins would be nice, but we would be happy with what we got. Abortion was ruled out. Vivian and Tina introduced me to The Fairy Shop in Marlborough in case I had a daughter. I took them to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Vivian was striking in her pink jump suit. I provided a contrast in my sober jacket. We were all three quite different in our backgrounds, but about babies we saw eye-to-eye. There was no doubt that we wanted to go ahead.

‘Have I passed the test?’

But I am sure it was.