5 Celebrities Who Used Surrogacy to Build Their Family

In a bit of an ironic twist, when Katey Sagal, who played mom Peggy Bundy on TV’s “Married…with Children” in the 90s married her second husband, Kurt Sutter, creator of “Sons of Anarchy” she was already a mother of two from her previous marriage. Sutter, however, had no biological children and the two yearned to raise a child together. Sagal was past her child-bearing years, so they decided to give surrogacy a chance. “We decided ‘let’s give it a shot and if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be,” Sagal told Parents magazine. “And if it wasn’t, we weren’t going to do it. But then our little Esme came through. That’s why we call her our little miracle, our beautiful miracle.”

Revealing to People magazine that she still struggled to get pregnant even after In Vitro Fertilization treatments to start a family with her boyfriend of two years, supermodel and entrepreneur Tyra Banks announced the couple’s boy, York Banks Asla, was born via a surrogate on Banks’s Instagram page. “He’s got my fingers and big eyes and his daddy Erik’s mouth and chin. And we thank the angel of a woman that carried our miracle baby boy for us; we pray for everyone who struggles to reach this joyous milestone,” Banks said.

Latin singer Ricky Martin longed to become a father, despite not having a partner to join in the journey. He knew being a dad was a role he was meant to play, so he decided to make his dream come true via a surrogate, choosing the option over the often-long process of adoption. His twins Matteo and Valentino were born in August of 2008. In Vanity Fair’s Spanish edition, Martin spoke lovingly about his surrogate, revealing, “I saw the picture and I said: ‘Who is this woman so angelic, so transparent? I would give my life for the woman who helped me bring my sons into this world.” Can we all say, “Aww….?”

Elizabeth Banks, The Hunger Games star, and her husband Max Handelman, became proud parents of two little boys, Felix and Magnus, after many unsuccessful attempts of getting pregnant thanks to gestational surrogacy. For Banks, the idea of not carrying a child was difficult at first. But she told Women’s Health magazine of her decision to use a surrogate, “It helps that other moms had said that once they had their babies, they forgot they were ever pregnant. So once my focus became the baby and not the pregnancy, it was a very easy decision.”