“As any new parent knows, the joy of welcoming a new baby into the world is unparalleled,” said Charlotte Cripps in The Independent. But since “Emily in Paris” actor Lily Collins and her director husband Charlie McDowell announced their baby’s birth by surrogacy, “hell has broken loose”.
After the couple shared their birth announcement on Instagram on 31 January, other social-media users have attacked their use of a surrogate. Accusations that Collins is part of an “unethical trend” for “rich people renting women’s bodies” shows “this surrogacy story has hit such a raw nerve”, said Cripps.
‘Social surrogacy’
Collins is far from the first Hollywood celeb to face scrutiny for having a child by surrogacy. Nicole Kidman, Kim Kardashian, Rebel Wilson, and Sarah Jessica Parker, among others, have faced backlash, too.
Many of Collins’ critics have focused their anger on what they see as “social surrogacy”: using a surrogate not for medical reasons, such as infertility, but for lifestyle ones, such as not having to change bodyshape or pause a career for pregnancy.
Collins hasn’t commented on her reasons for choosing surrogacy, although she has spoken in the past of fears that an eating disorder may have damaged her fertility. McDowell has responded to the criticism on Instagram with a comment saying, “It’s OK to not know why someone might need a surrogate to have a child”.
Wondering “why?” is “a natural reaction in the absence of information, particularly when it comes to celebrities”, said Sophie Beresiner, mother of two girls born through surrogacy, in Glamour. But everyone, including those in the public eye, has “the right to privacy”. Celebrity and privilege does not make you “immune from infertility”, after all.
‘An unedifying business’
But “no happy announcement will ever make me see surrogacy as anything other than an unedifying business, nor prevent me from calling for a ban,” said Claudia Connell in the Daily Mail.
The global surrogacy industry is thought to be worth nearly £14.5 billion, and that number is only expected to grow, said research provider Global Market Insights – by 2032, it could surpass £100 billion.
“At the heart of the trade lies a disturbing imbalance of power,” said Connell, who has struggled with her own fertility issues. “Surrogacy is available only to wealthy people.”
Surrogacy is legal in the UK but, unlike in many other countries, arrangements made are not legally binding. Surrogates can only offer their services altruistically, although they can be paid “reasonable expenses”. Some say this doesn’t do enough to recompense the surrogate or protect the prospective parents, who cannot enforce the agreement if the surrogate changes her mind. Meanwhile, outside the UK, surrogacy businesses are booming, with the fee for “commissioning parents” often starting at £40,000.
And when the cost of having children, let alone hiring surrogates or seeking fertility treatment, has become inaccessible to many, it’s understandable that the spectacle of “celebrities paying surrogates to have cute babies might unleash deep-rooted resentment”, said Cripps in The Independent. The “heated conversations” around the reality that many ordinary people feel they cannot afford to start a family, by any means, speak to an issue that goes much deeper than the controversy around celebrity surrogacy.