'I'm a surrogate - you shouldn't be angry at Lily Collins for choosing to have a baby through one'

Emily in Paris star, Lily Collins, last week announced the birth of her first child, Tove Jane McDowell, with her husband, Charlie McDowell.

But despite the birth of a baby being an exciting, life-changing milestone for the couple, their comments section was quickly flooded with vitriol - because they'd decided to use a surrogate.

"Words will never express our endless gratitude for our incredible surrogate and everyone who helped us along the way", Collins posted on Instagram alongside a photo of the tot. "We love you to the moon and back again…"

In simple terms, surrogacy is when a woman chooses to carry a baby for another couple. It might be because it's unsafe for the intended parent to carry the child herself, or in the circumstances of an LGBT+ couple, they might require a donor egg.

It's not a new thing. In fact, the first legal surrogacy arrangement took place in 1976, and thousands of others have since undertaken the route, including Kim Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Rebel Wilson, to name but a few of the high-profile faces who have shared their experiences.

"This is insane, I don’t understand how these kinds of practices are allowed in some parts of the world", one commenter hit out at Collins, among floods of congratulations.

"This is horrible, buying babies isn't right", another wrote.

Suddenly, there were hundreds more, claiming that the couple were "exploiting" another woman so that they could have a child of their own, or that "vanity" or the "fear of not getting jobs anymore" was at the forefront of Collins "not wanting" to get pregnant during the highs of her Hollywood career.

Except, that's never been the case for the actor - in fact, she's publicly expressed her desire for a baby for a number of years, even citing it as the reason she's attempted to overcome an eating disorder.

"My reason to finally start talking about [my eating disorder] was the moment I realized I wanted a family. I didn’t want this to be something I bring into that", she said in a 2017 interview with US Weekly.

Neither Collins nor McDowell have given a reason as to why they decided to take the route of surrogacy (nor should they have to), and now surrogates themselves want people to know what the experience of carrying someone else's baby is actually like - and how it shouldn't be viewed as a decision taken lightly.

However, McDowell did respond to the hate comments, simply writing: "In regards to the unkind messages about surrogacy and our path to having a baby — it’s ok to not be an expert on surrogacy. It’s ok to not know why someone might need a surrogate to have a child. It’s ok to not know the motivations of a surrogate regardless of what you assume."

While surrogacy has risen by 350 per cent in the last 12 years, it still only makes up a tiny proportion of all births.

Kay Read is head of global strategy, policy and ethics at My Surrogacy Journey, one of the UK's leading not-for-profit agencies matching surrogates with intended parents.

Not only is she at the forefront of promoting a safe, healthy, ethical journey for women who choose to be surrogates, but she's also about to become a surrogate for the first time herself in coming weeks.

Kay poses with the intended-parents she's offered to be a surrogate forKay Read

"In the world of fertility, and particularly where that intersects with celebrities, there is often more that is not being said than is being said, and so the reasons behind it becomes speculative", Read tells The Independent of how she felt reading the Barcelona star's story.

"If they find a surrogate through ethical pathways, and that is something that they're able to finance and support through ethical conditions, that it is absolutely none of our business whatsoever.

"How we choose to have our children, not have our children, or raise our children, is defined as reproductive justice. And I believe that reproductive justice includes the right to choose that you don't want to carry a pregnancy."

Read estimates that the process of becoming a surrogate goes beyond the nine months of carrying a child - and it can be up to three years to even find a suitable match between surrogates and parents-to-be.

Women volunteering as surrogates via agencies will then also undergo extensive screenings and health tests (both mental and physical) before being given the all-clear to go ahead with the process - as well as receiving counselling throughout - so when done properly, it's by no means a quick, cheap, or easy way of having a child.

"Often you will hear people saying, surrogacy needs to end for exploitation to end", Read continues, in relation to the backlash Collins and McDowell received.

"But surrogacy, in and of itself, is not an exploitative act. It's actually an act of real altruism and giving, even when it is a paid-for thing. The only thing that creates exploitation is supply and demand.

"If there are people out there looking to supply people's bodies at a cheap rate in an unethical way, and there are people demanding for that to exist, then it will exist. It's not surrogacy that creates exploitation."

She adds: "Surrogacy is life-changing. It's literally building families for people who cannot have them otherwise. Exploitation is when people choose to manipulate that."

Read acknowledges that surrogacy often gets bad press, particularly as the only times it gets spoken about is in the instance of the extreme, yet rare, exploitative instances, which have generally stemmed from unregulated, independently-sought surrogates: "It's like saying abortion needs to be stopped because it can be done on the black market.

"The surrogates end up being painted as the baddies, as opposed to whoever is the perpetrator...it's like saying abortion should be banned because it can be done on the black market."

Questions have also been raised around whether more famous people are choosing to use surrogates to protect their image and allow them to carry on working, and while Read admits there are no rules around this, those types of cases can usually be more deep-rooted in issues such as body-dysmorphia.

"We have limited surrogates, and we do prioritize intended parents who are in a position where there is no other means for them to make their babies", she says of how the agency operates.

"Who has got the right to unpack what vanity means for one person or another? It could be body dysmorphia. It could be a lot of loss of a woman's career. It could be all of these things that actually have a huge psychological impact on her reasons for choosing to do pregnancy this way. And I'm not the person to judge that."

Particularly in the UK, where surrogates are not allowed to be paid for carrying another person's child, matches are often people that the intended parents know. That was the case for Read, who met the two men she'll be carrying a baby for, and decided that she'd like to help them complete their family, after spending several years helping others find the same connection.

"Often as women we're told how we must use our bodies, whereas this is me saying, 'I offer to use my my body in this way, in order that you can have the love that I've got with my kids'", she says, adding that she's had full autonomy over her body throughout the process, and the baby will know who she is as they grow up.

But personal opinions aside, there's one thing she wishes everyone knew about surrogacy: "This is an act of radical empowerment for women who choose to purpose their bodies in a world where we are otherwise told everything that we have to do.

"It's a generous act of giving, and kindness, and it's about having the power to say, 'my body can do something radical, and there's nothing that can stop me'".

Why not read...

Khloe Kardashian says she 'struggled to connect' with surrogate child

Mum-to-be surprises sonographer sister by turning up to work for scan

Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.