Just when I think it can’t get worse, a new story breaks that seeks to win the race to the bottom. Celebrity event planner David Tutera and his husband Ryan Jurica announced they are divorcing. But what is heartbreaking is what they are doing to the children they produced via surrogacy and egg donation – each one is taking their baby, just like splitting up the furniture and other household assets.

As is often the case in gay couples, each wanted to genetically contribute to the child, so Tutera and Jurica fertilized donor eggs with each of their sperm, then implanted their embryos into the surrogate woman’s womb.

Tutera, on The View, said they had hoped having babies together would have helped their troubled relationship (does anyone really still think having kids together will fix marital strife?). But they didn’t even make it until the birth of the twins, having split before their surrogate delivered. Each took “their” baby home.

Is anyone thinking at all about the children? These babies, at birth, had only known each other and their birth mother. Upon birth they were immediately separated from all they had ever known. Tutera said that it is his and Jurica’s responsibility as the children’s parents to “do the right thing for our children.”

Doing the right thing would have meant stopping before they got onto the reproductive superhighway.

Children divided up and separated in the divorce as if they are china and furniture. A new bottom!

Author Profile

Jennifer Lahl, CBC Founder
Jennifer Lahl, CBC Founder
Jennifer Lahl, MA, BSN, RN, is founder and president of The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. Lahl couples her 25 years of experience as a pediatric critical care nurse, a hospital administrator, and a senior-level nursing manager with a deep passion to speak for those who have no voice. Lahl’s writings have appeared in various publications including Cambridge University Press, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, and the American Journal of Bioethics. As a field expert, she is routinely interviewed on radio and television including ABC, CBS, PBS, and NPR. She is also called upon to speak alongside lawmakers and members of the scientific community, even being invited to speak to members of the European Parliament in Brussels to address issues of egg trafficking; she has three times addressed the United Nations during the Commission on the Status of Women on egg and womb trafficking.