Exploring the alternative routes to becoming a parent

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Actress Lucy Liu has become the proud mother of her first child, born via surrogacy.

The 46-year-old former Charlie’s Angel and star of Elementary shared the news of her newborn son, Rockwell Lloyd Lui, on social media.

The actress is incredibly private and doesn’t share details of her love life, but has most recently been linked to Israeli-American hedge fund billionaire Noam Gottesman. Rockwell was born through a gestational surrogate, when a surrogate is implanted with an embryo created by IVF, using the intended mother’s egg and donor sperm. Whether the sperm was Liu’s partner or that of a donor has not been revealed.

Liu joins a growing number of celebrities using surrogacy to have children. Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, famously have two sons born through surrogacy, Zachary and Elijah.

Pop singer Ricky Martin had twins Matteo and Valentino using a surrogate in 2009, while single father and gossip columnist Perez Hilton (pictured below) had son Mario and daughter Mia by surrogate a couple of years apart.

Television chef Yotam Ottolenghi (pictured below) and his partner Karl Allen had their son, Max, through an American surrogate and have been campaigning for a change to British surrogacy laws ever since.

While recent high-profile court cases in Britain have brought the complications of surrogacy to light, surrogacy experts insist that the process is generally very easy with the correct advice. The Alternative Parenting Show, taking place in London on Saturday 19 September, will hold sessions on the legalities of using surrogates and provide advice to people wishing to pursue children via surrogacy or other ‘alternative’ routes to parenting, like IVF, in an informal setting.

info:

The Alternative Parenting Show
Saturday 19th September, 9:30am – 5pm
The Grand Connaught Rooms
61 Great Queen Street
London
WC2B 5DA