A 72-year-old couple in the U.K. is now the legal parents of a baby that they procured through surrogacy using the husband’s sperm and a donor egg.
Justice Gwynneth Knowles, who granted the elderly duo the right to raise the U.S.-born baby, nonetheless acknowledged that “Mr and Mrs K,” as the couple was referred to in court documents, will be 76 when their child “B” starts primary school and 82 when he starts secondary school.
“Put starkly, Mr and Mrs K will both be 89 years old when B reaches his majority,” the judge said.
“They have begun parenting at a time in their lives when, despite their current good health, it is foreseeable that their health will decline and that one or both of them will become seriously incapacitated or die before B reaches his majority,” the judge said.
The judge also acknowledged the “reality of what is likely to befall” the child, “namely the experience of loss and grief.”
“That experience may strike B at a time in his childhood when he is ill-prepared to understand or come to terms with it, upending his daily life and placing him in the care of adults to whom he is not emotionally close,” she said.
“No matter how fit a person of Mr and Mrs K’s age may be now, health and life itself are undoubtedly at the mercy of an ageing process which becomes ever more cruel and capricious as the years go by,” she added.
The couple paid in excess of £150,000 – over $200,000 in U.S. currency – to their California surrogate and the surrogate agency they employed.
The couple decided to pursue obtaining another child to parent in their declining golden years after their 26-year-old son, who reportedly was the product of in vitro fertilization (IVF), died of cancer a few years ago.
This is not an isolated case.
Unlike adoption, which is highly regulated in order to ensure the best possible lives for children, in most countries there are no legal age limits for parents who obtain children via the burgeoning surrogacy industry. It’s an industry that caters to wealthy parents’ dreams while creating nightmares for the children they’ve purchased through medical engineering.
“Last year, data obtained from the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service under freedom of information laws revealed that almost 300 men aged over 50 had applied to become the legal father of a surrogate child over the past five years – and 43 of them were over 60,” noted The Times (U.K.) social affairs correspondent, Sanchez Manning.
Sir Elton John was 63 years old when his first child was born through surrogacy and 65 at the birth of his second. His partner, David Furnish, was 48 and 50. When their younger child graduates from high school, they will be 81 and 68. At his college graduation, they’ll be 85 and 72.
In 2012, world-famous American-born fashion designer, homosexual Tom Ford, decided he wanted to have a child. He was 51 years old and his longtime partner, Richard Buckley, was 64. Buckley died less than 10 years later at age 73.
Children deserve biological parents – a mom and a dad – and not to be raised by men and women who are old enough to be their grandparents or great-grandparents.
“This is one of the most appallingly selfish things I’ve ever read,” Hadley Freeman, a columnist at The Times, wrote on X.
“Abhorrent, how is this legal? Any of it,” female rights activist Venice Allan asked on X.
“Surrogacy is an abomination,” another X user responded.
“Prostitution on steroids,” she added
Surrogacy is an abomination
— radnotlib (@radnotlib) May 28, 2025
Prostitution on steroids
“The message is clear: People are disgusted that this is going on,” Surrogacy Concern, an organization founded to expose the harms of surrogacy, wrote on X in response to the story. “International surrogacy must be banned.”