Branded a selfish rich bitch... for buying a baby girl after having FOUR boys
‘Loose Women’ star told viewers she was paying to choose sex of next child, then she was...
DANIELLE LLOYD has made quite a name for herself with her outspoken views – and in particular for airing topics that send more sensitive viewers running for the ear plugs.
Earlier this year, the model turned television personality explained to the public that she had undergone intimate surgery to combat post-natal incontinence.
On another occasion, the panel of ITV’s Loose Women learned to their shock that she planned to eat her own placenta.
They were discussions that might seem, well, just a little awkward, but have nevertheless generated overflowing mailboxes.
Yet of all the uncomfortable subjects Danielle has decided to embrace in the past few years, none has been so dangerously explosive as her recent admission that she has decided to choose the gender of her next child and use medical science to ensure it is a baby girl.
To Danielle, this is a straightforward matter.
She has four boys already and now she wants to bring some balance to her young family.
After all, gender selection is already a multi-million-dollar industry in America, where she will go, and it is clear that well-off Britons are already taking advantage of the service offered by clinics in California and elsewhere.
But the process, condemned by the World Health Organisation (WHO), is illegal in this country – and the backlash against Danielle has been furious.
The 34-year-old explains she has received thousands of angry messages on Instagram and Twitter, some of them extreme, the worst from women who admit they cannot have children of their own.
Speaking for the first time about the tide of abuse, she says: ‘They called me a “selfish, disgusting bitch” who should be thankful for my four miracle babies.’
One desperate woman asked for some of her eggs.
‘I didn’t know what to say back. I’d never even thought about that. It was all quite shocking,’ she says. ‘I’m very honest and don’t beat around the bush, but I didn’t expect the amount of vitriol.
‘It was like a bomb had gone off. I didn’t even think I had said anything that bad, but I admit that perhaps I didn’t really think about it that much.’
Liverpool-born Danielle had three sons, Archie, Harry and George, with her ex husband Jamie O’Hara, the former Tottenham Hotspurs midfielder. The couple divorced in 2014. Her fourth son, Ronnie, is with her fiancé, electrician Michael O’Neill.
She continues: ‘I want a girl and if I can pay for it, then that’s OK, I can get one.’
It is, as she has found, a highly controversial stance – which makes it all the more remarkable that Danielle has agreed to address it head-on.
The WHO says that sex selection raises ‘serious moral, legal, and social issues’ and can lead to
Why would anyone begrudge me a daughter?
the devaluation of women and gender imbalance.
For all the public and official hostility, though, the fact is that the industry is rapidly expanding to meet a huge and growing demand.
And if in Britain the demand remains unspoken, in America it is rapidly becoming the norm for those who can afford it.
Dr Jeffrey Steinberg at leading US specialists The Fertility Institutes says he routinely treats A-list actors, pop stars and athletes.
Tellingly, of 640 couples who came through his doors in 2017, more than one in ten was British.
According to Dr Daniel Potter at rival American clinic HRC Fertility, he sees ten patients a month from this country who want to select the gender of their baby.
It is, after all, an age-old wish. From cave paintings depicting a preference for sons, to Aristotle’s prescription for producing boys (tying off of the man’s left testicle), attempts to choose the gender of children go back centuries. But Danielle’s decision to obtain – or effectively buy – a baby girl belongs firmly to the scientific realm.
She had first heard about the gender selection procedure in the wake of giving birth to Ronnie, now ten months old. Enquiring further, she learnt that the treatment is accurate in 99 per cent of the cases in which a baby is successfully born and started to investigate the possibility of arranging for the selection of a girl child in Northern Cyprus, another state where it is legal.
After further questioning, however, she and fiance Michael settled on America, where they felt the overall safeguards would be stronger.
The couple will marry next year, and she will travel to California.
Once there, a number of her eggs will be harvested and fertilised, and then one or two of the resulting female embryos will be reimplanted in the mother’s womb. The rest will be stored for possible use in the future.
It will cost her about £12,000 plus flights and accommodation – and that’s just for one round.
But to Danielle, getting the little girl that she craves is worth every penny.
‘There’s an urge inside me to have a girl. I just can’t let it go,’ she explains.
‘I’ve got such an amazing relationship with my mum. I want to have that bond with my daughter. Why would anyone begrudge me that?
‘I also want my boys to have that brother-sister relationship. Our family is not yet complete.
‘Michael feels the same way. He really wants a girl. If I had four girls, we’d be going off and getting a boy.
‘Realistically, if I’m going to have one more, if this science is there, why not do it? I don’t think it’s a selfish thing to do. I could be selfish and go on for years having more and more boys.
‘I’ve got four lovely boys but I don’t want to get to 50 or 60 and think I could have had a girl but didn’t,’ she adds.
‘The thought of not going to my daughter’s wedding or not having those chats I have with my mum. Girls always have that relationship with their mothers.’
Her television profile does, she admits, make her a lightning rod for criticism, particularly from those who assume she is not merely comfortably off, but rich. ‘People say, “I bet she’s got ten nannies”.
‘It really gets my back up. Actually, no. And, before Michael came along, I did it as a single mother.’
She claims to understand her critics’ point of view, yet remains defiantly convinced she has the right to press ahead.
‘When I mentioned it on television, people phoned in and said that if they did what I was doing in China, where they can have only one child, the population would be just boys,’ she says.
‘They told me stories about baby girls being flushed down the toilet. It makes me feel like crying, but I’m nothing to do with that sort of world.
‘If I was sitting here with no kids and saying I’m doing gender selection because I only want a girl and not a boy, then of course I’d expect criticism. ‘But I’m not. ‘I realise people have strong opinions. But I still don’t understand how anyone can call me a disgrace because I want a little girl as well as my boys. I genuinely don’t get what the big deal is.
‘If we were having this debate in America, the attitude would be completely different because gender selection is perfectly legal and respectable there. It’s like IVF. They get the egg, artificially inseminate it and then check if the embryo is a girl or a boy.
‘They give you the option of inserting one or two embryos. It might not work with one, so you’d have to pay again.
‘Obviously there are women who can’t have children and I can totally understand that. To some of them, what I’m going to do makes me a terrible person.
‘But at the same time, a lot of women have asked me to let them know where I’m going for the procedure, because they’d love to go there too.
‘Women who had already been through it got in touch to pass on their advice.’
Her sons, too, are right behind her, she says.
‘They ask me every day “Mummy, have you got a baby sister in your tummy yet?” When it comes to birthdays and Christmases, they ask for a sister,’ says Danielle.
‘I can see why some people think it’s wrong and selfish. Why don’t you just appreciate the children you’ve got? And, so on.
‘But I really do appreciate them. I live for my children and love being a mum; it’s what I was made to do.’
I love being a mum. It’s what I was made to do...