The Mirror: Germaine Greer has hit out at Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish, after they chose to name David as their sons’ mother on their birth certificates. The feminist author, 76, claimed the concept of motherhood had “emptied out”, and went on to launch an attack on the process of IVF.
Sir Elton and his husband have sons Zachary, four, and Elijah, two, together – both born to the same surrogate mother, who the singer says they love “like a sister”, as well as both sharing the same anonymous egg donor.
This latest attack comes shortly after the star was involved in a high profile row with Italian fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, who called their IVF children ‘synthetic’.
Claiming the concept of motherhood has “been deconstructed”, Germaine hit out at the pair for naming a man the boys’ mother. Speaking at the Hay Festival, Greer said: “Sometimes I think that really the problem is the concept of motherhood, which we can’t give any real structure to. Sir Elton John and his ‘wife’ David Furnish have entered on the birth certificate of their two sons that David Furnish is the mother. I’m sorry. That will give you an idea of how the concept of motherhood has emptied out. It’s gone. It’s been deconstructed.”
She went on to hit out at the process of IVF, according to Mail Online. “We now have a ‘genetic’ mother, who supplies eggs. It depends entirely on where she is if she is going to be allowed to know what happens to the eggs. And women tend to care,” she said.
“An egg is not a sperm, we do not produce 400million of them in one go. One miserable little egg pops every month.” She added: “I’m sorry. Did we talk about this? Did we sit down and talk about what eggs mean to women?” She even goes on to claim the 1967 Abortion Act was only introduced because of lobbying from the fertility industry.
We have contacted Germaine, and Sir Elton decline to comment.
DCG
