British couple Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow with two of their surrogate babies.
A British millionaire who stars in a Sky TV reality show about his surrogate baby business responded to an e-mail from a critic by boasting about his £18 million London mansion and threatening to use his influence to “crush anyone” who opposed him.
Barrie Drewitt-Barlow is CEO of the British Surrogacy Centre and, along with his gay partner Tony, stars in the series The Parent Makers that began airing last month on the Sky 192 satellite channel. Publicity for the show drew a hostile online reaction from Luke McKee, an Australian exile living in Asia. McKee posted a message full of anti-gay slurs (“queers,” “faggots,” etc.) at a right-wing online forum, suggesting that Drewitt-Barlow’s surrogate business may be violating British and U.S. laws. After a lengthy e-mail exchange with McKee, Barrie Drewitt-Barlow sent a message Friday morning calling McKee a “stalker” and “trailer trash,” and bragged that his wealth would protect him from investigation or adverse publicity. An excerpt of that e-mail:
From: Barrie Drewitt-Barlow <[email protected]>
To: Luke McKee
. . .
Sent: Friday, May 2, 2014 9:26 AM
Subject: RE: i always have the last word
. . . This time, you have met someone who is not only wealthier than you who can fight your pathetic attempt to blacken their name, but someone who is far more intelligent then you and someone who actually, does not give a shit about what anyone else in the world thinks of him! . . .
Do yourself a big favour and move on, you cannot win a fight against me, I’m far too well respected for some little idiot like you to do anything to. And as far as using other people to do the job for you as you say, hahahhahahaha I laugh in your face, and say to you, BRING IT ON, my vast wealth and contacts will crush anyone you bring onto your team! . . .
[T]onight, I will sit in my 16 bedroomed, £18 million pound London mansion, sipping champagne and eating the finest foods available to me, cooked by the house keeper and served by one of our three live in maids, before tucking my stunningly good looking 5 children up in their amazing bedrooms! After which, I will go for a swim in my swimming pool with my husband and talk about how much money we have made over the past 48 hours whilst YOU, sit in the poverty of your own making! Now do something worthy with your miserable life and get a job!
You prick! lolol
Drewitt-Barlow has often been controversial. Last year, he and his partner sued the Church of England demanding religious recognition of same-sex marriage. That lawsuit provoked criticism of Prime Minister David Cameron from conservatives like Colin Hart of the Coalition for Marriage, who told the London Daily Mail: “The ink’s not even dry on the [new marriage law] and churches are already facing litigation. We warned Mr. Cameron this would happen, we told him he was making promises that he couldn’t possibly keep. He didn’t listen. He didn’t care. He’s the one who has created this mess. Mr. Cameron’s chickens are coming home to roost and it will be ordinary people with a religious belief who yet again fall victim to the totalitarian forces of political correctness.”
The commercial surrogacy business is a growing international trade that has been criticized as a form of “human trafficking,” especially by women’s rights advocates who say the lucrative practice — which is outlawed in many countries — enables wealthy people to exploit poor women as “breeders.” Reuters reported last year:
India opened up to commercial surrogacy in 2002. It is among just a handful of countries – including Georgia, Russia, Thailand and Ukraine – and a few U.S. states where women can be paid to carry another’s genetic child through a process of in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) and embryo transfer.
The low-cost technology, skilled doctors, scant bureaucracy and a plentiful supply of surrogates have made India a preferred destination for fertility tourism, attracting nationals from Britain, the United States, Australia and Japan, to name a few. . . .
A U.N.-backed study in July 2012 estimated the surrogacy business at more than $400 million a year, with over 3,000 fertility clinics across India. . . .
India’s surrogacy industry is vilified by women’s rights groups who say fertility clinics are nothing more than “baby factories” for the rich. In the absence of regulation, they say many poor and uneducated women are lured by agents, hired by clinics, into signing contracts they do not fully understand.
In May [2012], surrogate mother Premila Vaghela, 30, died days after delivering a child for an American couple at a clinic in Gujarat. It was recorded as an “accidental death” by police.
Negative attention was also focused on surrogate parenthood last year by the highly-publicized case of a gay couple whose son — which they said was produced by a Russian surrogate impregnated by one of the men’s sperm — was exploited by an “international syndicate” of pedophiles known as the “Boy Lovers Network”:
Mark Newton, 42, was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison last week by U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker. Authorities say Newton and his partner, Peter Truong, 36, paid a Russian woman $8,000 to give birth to a boy they said was conceived using artificial insemination with Newton’s sperm. The men began sexually abusing the boy before he was two weeks old, recording the acts on video they shared online with other pedophiles.
“What can be said? What can be done to erase some of the horror of this?” Judge Barker said Friday in giving the maximum sentence to Newton, an American who had become an Australian citizen. Prosecutors said the case was tried in Judge Barker’s U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana because images of the boy were found on the computer of an Indiana man who was arrested as part of a larger child-pornography investigation.
Records in the case had previously been sealed, the Indianapolis Star reported. Newton and Truong made the boy available for molestation by other men in France, Germany and the United States, according to prosecutors. “For more than one year and across three continents, these men submitted this young child to some of the most heinous acts of exploitation that this office has ever seen,” said U.S. Attorney Joe Hogsett.
Barrie Drewitt Barlow is @Gaydads on Twitter. The Sky TV show has its own Twitter account, @TheParentMakers. Luke McKee is @gaysabovethelaw on Twitter.
Extremely evil people but it isn’t surprising. Yes even I had a run in with these degenerates
What was your experience?
detergents? like tide?
LOL spell check:)
Oh the usual name calling it was on twitter. I posted how it is abusive to deliberately deprive a child of a mother or father and a normal family life and the hate pile on began they jump in on the thread
I blocked and the anon stalker @nicolebonnet1 jumped in and proceed too post the usual stuff she does about me being a human trafficker, convicted felon, violent stalker, a pedophile yadda yadda yadda.
Nicole got that account suspended as well with her fake abuse reports. It seem twitter doesn’t have a problem with trolls posting lies so vile as to incite.
That is prolly an understatement
These kids look like props.
They’ll reap what they sow. And God forgive me but I’ll laugh when they do. Keep fighting!
Of course they are note he says his 5 good looking children. They are accessories
It would be better if they found Christ especially for their kids
Or just even God.
This is not restricted to homosexual couples, as you probably imagine…
One of our staff at work is in the process of buying a baby from a surrogate. Our boss [a woman who purchased her own two children the same way] said for we mangers not to worry for the staffer because she was obtaining her child through a woman who ‘has done it several times before and never backed-out of a deal’.
Our office will be throwing a baby shower for the female staffer soon. Because I want to keep my job, my declining to provide a gift will have to be with a lie as explanation [‘I think it’s bad luck to give gifts before a baby is actually born’].
I feel like Howard Roark right about now: ‘This is slowly becoming a world in which I cannot permit myself to live’ – never fear: this too shall pass, but it happens more frequently these days.
I’m afraid that I’ll lose my appetite if I research this icky couple, but let’s just say that Barrie and Tony went through the surrogate process, themselves, to produce their five “stunningly good looking” children. I wonder, did Lord Barrie employ the same imperious attitude when he explained to his boy toy . . . er, life partner . . . errr, husband, that he Lord Barrie would be the Donator of the Sperm. You know, Tony, because your sperm is inferior to Lord Barrie’s.
Did he break the news to Tony in the same way that he lectures trailer trash: . . . “Dear Tony, I’m the breadwinner in this family and I am far more intelligent then [sic] you and I don’t really give a shit if I am hurting yer widdle feelings right now! Do yourself a big favour and back up from the surrogate and zip up your zipper, you cannot win a fight against me, I’m far too well respected for some little idiot like you to talk back to. Don’t forget, you get to live in my 16 bedroomed, £18 million pound London mansion at my leisure, sipping my champagne and eating my fine foods, cooked by the house keeper and served by one of our three live in maids, before tucking my . . . errr, I mean our, stunningly good looking 5 children up in my . . . err, I mean their amazing bedrooms!”
It is absolutely imperative for these people to destroy the meaning of the terms “marriage” and “family.” When people no longer acknowledge that those institutions are specifically composed, then any grouping of humans becomes fungible with any other. The endgame is total state control over the process of nurturing children to eliminate all competition to the state itself.
Oh, I noted. I did, indeed. Material objects, like the wine, housekeeper, maids, and finest foods.
I find excellent scotch or bourbon helps.
I’m wondering why the situation with the people you work with bothers you. You don’t say much about them, other than they are not homosexual.
So, if an infertile couple wants to have a child, and they make arrangements with a surrogate to bring that about, what is the harm? Just as a general matter, if the couple loves the child, you have a happy child, happy couple, and (assuming she is well paid), a happy surrogate. In what way is anyone worse off?
Surrogacy is an unintended consequence of abortion on demand There aren’t enough healthy newborns so adoption has become a business and surrogacy is cheaper and less intrusive
It’s easy to get lost in the emotional aspects of infertile couples and fail to see the major ethical problems with surrogacy. In the present case, not only are these miscreants deliberately depriving a child of the unique love only a Mother provides, they are using the child as not only an accessory to their lives but as a political prop. They are nothing more than Narcissists of the most malignant kind.
At one time only married couples were treated by infertility specialists Now it is anything goes
The problem is turning human life into a commercial commodity to be auctioned to the highest bidder. From individual surrogate contracts, it’s a mere short step to Third World baby farms.
So if an infertile couple, say the wife is unable to conceive or carry a child, if they arrange for a surrogate, using the husband’s sperm to create the child, the surrogate carries it to term (and is well paid for her service), and then the couple takes and raises the child. Given that scenario, you would reduce it to “turning human life into a commercial commodity”?
You could make the all the exact same arguments about adoption. Prospective adoptive parents and the people trying to place the child, are all just “turning human life into a commercial commodity”.
There is nothing at all wrong, not in anyway whatsoever, in a loving, infertile couple making arrangements so that they can have a child to love and raise as their own.
Are there potential abuses? Yes, most assuredly. But, if your only solution is to bar loving couples from bringing up a child that is not their own, then you need to go back to the drawing board.
If you want to say that the we should be careful about who is allowed to procure a child (in other than the old fashioned way), I would agree with that. I think that homosexual couples should be banned from adopting children. But, surrogacy, used to help an infertile couple, that is not a problem.
Adoption is different, because the creation of a child for someone else is not the purpose. Adoption is a solution to the problem of children without parents; it does not specifically create a new life for monetary purposes.
Absolutely. Plus, in many (if not most) cases involving surrogacy at least one of the parents contribute their sperm or egg to the child. Sometimes, even both, if the problem is with the woman just not being able to carry a child to term.
I think it is also a plus that the shaming or unmarried pregnant women has been dialed way back. Better if she brings a child to term and gives it up for adoption instead of snuffing it out.
The surrogate in question was not impregnated with the staffer’s husband’s sperm.
Thanks, RS. That would have been my answer – well done.
There is nothing wrong with money. There is nothing wrong with a new life. There is nothing wrong when you combine the two. Actually, a child brought into this world deliberately, with the planning of the mother, father, and the surrogate, is no problem at all. If money changes hands, how does that make it bad?
Just because the surrogate gets paid, that does not mean a baby was sold. She is paid for allowing her body to be used for the 9 months to grow the baby, but the plan all along was for it to be the child of the couple.
That’s was the bad part? If it had been the husband’s sperm, you would no longer object?
Utilitarianism is the enemy of Morality. Reducing a baby to a commodity is immoral.
No…just clarifying.
You might as well say it is wrong because it says it in the bible (or in some other religious text). That is only convincing to people who believe that the bible is the literal word of God and must be obeyed in all respects. In making a public policy argument, you have to go beyond that if you want to convince anyone, at least anyone who doesn’t already agree with you.
You didn’t.
That is only convincing to people who believe that the bible is the literal word of God….
Huh? So Catholics, who believe The Bible was written by Human Beings agree with you?
Are you, perhaps, a Libertarian?
Third World baby farms are already here. Not just India, but it’s going on in Mexico and a couple West African nations too. Robert Oscar Lopez reported on agencies that “specialize” in impregnating third world women with the sperm of HIV+ men–“washed” of course, and they claim “minimal risk” but we are already at the point where someone thinks this is a keen way to make money.
I do not have a problem per se with a married couple who due to medical conditions can’t have children using a surrogate. I would prefer we made adoption more of an option too. And while I tend to be libertarian when it comes to government regulation (and have a dim view of social workers), if any field warrants review and oversight this is one.
I am definitely not a capital ‘L’ Libertarian. I would describe myself as having many libertarian tendencies. I do believe in liberty, quite emphatically.
I am not an expect on Catholic theology, but if I am not mistaken, the Catholics (and most Christian churches) believe that the first 5 books were the direct word of God to Moses. I wouldn’t place any bets on that, though, and am feeling too lazy right now to research the point.
Money makes right, or something.
Have you read The Handmaid’s Tale?
Christianity was the inspiration for the Abolitionist movement. Human beings should not be treated like commodities. It makes no difference if they are adults, teenagers, toddlers, infants, or embrupyos.
What was it that Jeremy Bentham said? Oh yeah, that human rights are “nonsense upon stilts”.
Contemporary utilitarians still regard that as reasonable. That is all.
My argument was not Utilitarian. Utilitarianism involves a balancing of bad vs good. If I go murder the guy across the street, but it can be shown that everyone else is better off – his wife, children, neighbors, co-workers, etc – then the Utilitarian will want to do a balancing of the harm done to the guy vs the “good” for everyone else.
I didn’t say ok, there is some harm, but it works out for everyone else, so it is all good. I asked you to identify a single person who was harmed in the hypothetical I laid out (infertile, loving, heterosexual couple using a surrogate).
You have not made an honest attempt to answer that question.
There is nothing wrong when you combine the two.
An assertion without philosophical support.
First, it is not “the child of the couple,” because, by definition, one of the two is infertile. Second, the process reduces conception to a business transaction. It is no different than breeding thoroughbred horses. With humans, it becomes by definition “slavery.” Third, it further destroys the institution of marriage, by separating it from procreation. Forth, it treats children as if they were some sort of lifestyle accouterment.
No, a couple hiring a lawyer to help them adopt a baby is not involved in slavery. If instead of getting lucky and finding an available baby right off the bat, they instead hire a surrogate to allow herself to be used to grow the baby, they are still not engaged in slavery. Slavery involves the ownership of one human by another. Adoption does not.
If a slaveholder engaged in the practice of deciding to breed two of his slaves together in the hope that the match would result in a particularly excellent new slave for his plantation, then that behavior is on par with your race horses.
Not the proper question. We can all posit hypotheticals designed to reach an emotionally satisfying conclusion. The issue is not whether an individual is harmed among the four to whom you arbitrarily limit consideration. In truth, Humanity is harmed because it significantly alters the philosophical perception of what being a Human is.
On this planet, there are Humans and there is everything else, i.e. “stuff.” “Stuff” is bought, sold or otherwise disposed of in conformance with the desires or whims of Humans. Surrogacy, no matter how saintly the contracting parties may be, transforms both the surrogate and the product of the surrogacy to a commodity, removing from both the dignity of being Human. Once Humans are viewed as merely expressions of supply and demand, then there is no longer any philosophical factor limiting their abuse other than the money, power or whim of the abuser. It matters not that you posit three paragons of virtue as the participants.
I said “four” persons within your hypothetical. I was including the child. I note you did not. That omission speaks volumes and makes my point, I think.
The creation of human life, for which life I exchange something of value, is slavery, whether the purpose for which I desire the life is to work on my plantation or to provide me with emotional succor in my dotage. The fact that one purpose is nominally benevolent does not change the nature of the transaction.
The problem you are describing, a child growing up without a mother, is not as a result of surrogacy, but rather as a result of the changes in adoption. Homosexual couples now have the right to adopt. This is a problem with or without surrogates. The place to address the problem is with the adoption laws. If adoptions (including with the services of a surrogate), were limited to a qualified MF couple, the problem of kids being placed in homes without a mother would be addressed.
No, in fact, that is not the definition of slavery. If you disagree, please direct me to a dictionary that uses your definition.
Slavery, at a minimum, involves the ownership of one human being by another. Surrogacy, at least as practiced in the USA, does not involve owning another person.