Lily Collins: Why Her Surrogacy Journey Was NOT Due To Her ‘Laziness’ To Get Pregnant – And Why One’s Personal Journey To Create Their ‘Dream Family’ Is Actually None Of Our Business

The previous blog entry was about Jennifer Aniston’s reel life personal, as seen in the 2006 film, The Breakup, which also starred Vince Vaughn. She famously filmed the film following her divorce from Brad Pitt. She dated Vaughn during filming, but the romance was short-lived as they broke off their relationship after only a year of dating. Nevertheless, Aniston only had positive things to say about her ex. In a 2008, she said, ‘I call Vince my defibrillator. He literally brought me back to life. My first gasp of air was a big laugh! It was great. I love him. He’s a bull in a china shop. He was lovely and fun and perfect for the time we had together. And I needed that. And it sort of ran its course. She then dated John Meyer for a year, as well as Justin Theroux. The two were married between 2015 and 2018. In a 2018 interview with Elle, Aniston spoke of her two failed marriages. She said, ‘My marriages, they’ve been very successful, in [my] personal opinion. And when they came to an end, it was a choice that was made because we chose to be happy, and sometimes happiness doesn’t exist within that arrangement anymore.’

In 2022, Aniston revealed that she’d gone through fertility struggles and went through IVF in her 30’s and 40’s to try to convince. She said in her interview with Allure, ‘I was trying to get pregnant. It was a challenging road for me, the baby-making road. All the years and years and years of speculation. It was really hard. I was going through IVF, drinking Chinese teas, you name it. I was throwing everything at it. I would’ve given anything if someone had said to me, ‘Freeze your eggs. Do yourself a favor.’ You just don’t think it. So here I am today. The ship has sailed. I have zero regrets. I actually feel a little relief now because there is no more, ‘Can I? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.’ I don’t have to think about that anymore.’ This was the answer to the media’s most important question in the 2000’s, which was why Jennifer Aniston ever not pregnant…

During the later years of Friends, following her marriage to Pitt, Aniston was heavily scrutinized by the media for the automatic expectation that she’d get pregnant. The biggest headline back then was, ‘Does Jen Have a Baby Bump?’ The narrative created by the media was that she was selfish. Of that time, Aniston said, ‘I just cared about my career. And God forbid a woman is successful and doesn’t have a child. And the reason my husband left me, why we broke up and ended our marriage, was because I wouldn’t give him a kid. It was absolute lies. I don’t have anything to hide at this point.’ This scrutiny that she faced is something that most of us women. But her pain is something a lot of us can relate to. The success rates for IVF are 25.1 percent for maternal ages 38-40, and 12.7 percent for ages 41-42, according to data from the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology.

Aniston had done IVF completely in silence. She let the entire world speak of her body in such a demeaning manner and never said a single word to defend herself. That’s because the worldview of infertility and going through science to conceive and prepare for a family in the way was deemed unethical. In 2005, IVF was still a new practice in family planning even though it had already been around for a few decades by that point in time. While it was widely accepted as a treatment for infertility, there were concerns about the morality of manipulating human reproduction and the potential for unintended consequences. To break things down more thoroughly:

1. Limited Acceptance and Ethical Debate: 

• Experimental: IVF was still considered a relatively new technology, and its success rates were lower than today. 
• Ethical Concerns: Many people, including within the scientific community, questioned the ethics of manipulating human reproduction. 
• Religious and Moral Opposition: Some religious groups and individuals opposed IVF, citing concerns about the natural order of conception and the sanctity of life. 
• Public Skepticism: The public’s understanding of IVF was still evolving, and there were concerns about the technology’s safety, effectiveness, and potential for creating “designer babies”. 

2. Focus on Infertility Treatment: 

• Primary Application: IVF was primarily seen as a treatment for infertility, especially for couples with tubal problems or unexplained infertility. 
• Limited Use in Other Cases: While IVF was beginning to be considered for other reasons, such as genetic screening or donor eggs, its use in these cases was still limited and debated. 
• Rising Demand: As IVF technology improved and became more accessible, the demand for IVF treatment also increased, particularly among individuals and couples who wanted to overcome infertility barriers. 

3. Emerging Understanding and Public Awareness: 

• Media Coverage: IVF was starting to receive more media attention, both positive and negative, helping to shape public understanding and awareness. 
• Patient Experiences: Stories and testimonials from individuals and couples who had undergone IVF started to emerge, helping to humanize the process and reduce some of the stigma surrounding it. 
• Growing Public Support: As more people underwent IVF and as its success rates improved, there was a gradual shift towards greater public acceptance and support for the technology. 

4. Key Developments and Challenges: 

• Multiple Embryo Transfer: In the early years of IVF, multiple embryos were often transferred to increase the chances of pregnancy, which led to a higher rate of multiple births (twins, triplets). 
• Embryo Banking: The practice of embryo banking, where fertilized eggs were frozen and stored for later use, also emerged during this time. 
• Research and Innovation: Researchers were actively working to improve IVF techniques, such as embryo cryopreservation, assisted hatching, and preimplantation genetic testing. 

Women really can’t win these days. No matter what choice we make for ourselves, we’re going to get judged by society who views anything but the norm to be wrong. If we decide not to have children because we don’t want them, we’re judged. If we decide not to have children due to infertility, we’re judged. If we decide to go through IVF to help us get pregnant, we’re judged. If we decide to a surrogate, we’re judged. In 2024, senator JD Vance argued that ‘childless cat ladies’ shouldn’t have a direct stake in political decisions. In 2021, he asked Tucker Carlson, ‘How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it? We’re effectively run in this country… by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable in their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.

More than ever, we hear more and more women open up about going through IVF and surrogacy to have their children. Kim Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian, Paris Hilton, Sarah Jessica Parker, Chrissy Teigen, Nicole Kidman, Rebel Wilson, Courtney Cox, Michelle Obama, Adrienne Bailon, Priyanka Chopra, Mariah Carey, Jamie Chung, Michelle Buteau, Erin Andrews, Kristen Wiig, Hilaria Baldwin, Olivia Munn, Gabrielle Union, Jordana Brewster, and more. A lot of these women have been open about their own personal choices and reasons as to why they went the scientific route into family planning. Kim Kardashian went through surrogacy with her two younger kids after experiencing life-threatening health issues in her two pregnancies. Paris Hilton chose surrogacy due to the trauma she’d endured as a teen at the hands of youth residential treatment facilities. Jamie Chung chose to go through surrogacy because she didn’t want a pregnancy to affect her career. Olivia Munn went through surrogacy to have her second child after a battle with cancer. Of her experience, she said she felt like an expectant father in her surrogacy journey.

In 2023, Erin Andrew’s told Glamour of her infertility struggles, ‘I think that so many people are going through fertility struggles, and they don’t want to talk about it. For a while, it feels like a little bit of an embarrassment, especially when you’ve had success in your life in other areas, like my husband and I have. You expect things to come easy and they don’t. It doesn’t matter who you are. There’s still a stigma surrounding surrogacy, and some people feel shame. I think people think that if you are not carrying the baby, it’s not your baby. I know the one thing my husband kept saying to people is, ‘It’s our baby. It’s our baby.’ And I was like, ‘You don’t have to say that.’ But that worked for him for a while, you know? He wanted to just say, ‘This is our DNA.’ I’d like to see it not be such a sensitive thing in conversations. I know people don’t know what to say, but lean in a little bit. Also, I want people that are going through it not to be embarrassed about it.’

BUT…

What about those people who wish to not have these conversations and choose to not disclose any information about their personal struggles or reasons as to why they chose the non-traditional route to having their families? Emily In Paris star Lily Collins was one of the latest celebrities to reveal to the world that she went through scientific methods to have a child with her husband, Charlie McDowell, when she welcomed her daughter Tove via a surrogate. She was faced with much criticism as she never revealed why she went that route. As a result, McDowell responded, ‘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. And it’s ok to spend less time spewing hateful words into the world, especially in regards to a beautiful baby girl who has brought a lot of love into people’s lives. That’s all for now because she just pooped and I need to change her diaper.’

There could be many reasons why someone might choose to go through surrogacy. Not all of these reasons involve infertility. Some medical conditions, like uterine scarring, cancer, or other health problems, can make pregnancy risky or impossible, leading couples to choose surrogacy. Some couples choose surrogacy for non-medical reasons, such as wanting to avoid the physical and emotional challenges of pregnancy, or to preserve their bodies for career or other reasons. Surrogacy is also a common pathway for same-sex couples who are unable to carry a child themselves. And others will choose surrogacy in order to avoid having to sacrifice their careers while building their families.

Collins never actually disclosed why she went through surrogacy, and for that she was immensely judged. In her 2017 memoir, Unfiltered: No Shame, No Regrets, Just Me, she did reveal her struggles with bulimia that had led to her periods stopping, which led to her concerns that she might never carry children. She wrote of the disorder, ‘I couldn’t handle the pain and confusion surrounding my dad’s divorce, and I was having a hard time balancing being a teenager with pursuing two different grown-up careers — both of which I’d chosen myself, but which also focused heavily on how I looked. Eating was no longer a fun social event, but instead a chore and a punishment. I was exhausted and antsy and bitchy all the time. I sure as hell wasn’t much fun. But my plan was working! I was in control! I was skinny! Between the starvation, the diet pills, the laxatives, and throwing up, I not only lost all of my energy, but my body started to shut down. My hair and nails lost their shine and became brittle. My throat burned and my esophagus ached. My period stopped for a couple of years and I was terrified I had ruined my chances of having kids. Now, it’s just something that’s a part of my past that I keep in check. I don’t live in the disorder. It doesn’t affect my day-to-day in that I don’t partake in the disorder. It’s a part of who I am, but it’s always something that I look back on and think about in terms of my progress.’ That same year, Collins starred in the Netflix original film, To The Bone, as a young woman struggling with Anorexia. While promoting the film, she spoke heavily of her own experiences of living with an eating disorder.

Her writing in itself should’ve been enough for others to be encouraged to showcase encourage empathy and understanding, not nastiness and judgment, when Collins announced the birth of her daughter. She finally had the family she wasn’t sure she could have. It just so happened that she needed ‘a little’ help to do so. But instead, she was scrutinized and shamed. Many commented that it was her duty to adopt. Is it really Collins’ responsibility to take on that path if she doesn’t want to? I myself wouldn’t have gone through the adoption route. Kids who’ve been adopted need more love than ever; a type of love that I just wouldn’t be able to give them. It’s heartbreakingly awful that there are so many children who desperately need homes and families, but there are also so many people who could offer them, but it’s just not me.

I didn’t even want to go through IVF. I didn’t want my body to go through the physical, emotional, and financial pain that comes with IVF. I don’t even know what led to me changing my mind. But one thing I was clear about: the baby had to be genetically mine and my husband’s. There’d be no use of an egg or a sperm donors; and we wouldn’t donate our embryos to another couple in need. If we weren’t to use them, they’d be destroyed. The IVF process ended up being exactly what I thought it’d be and more – expensive, painful, lonely. After the embryo transfer failed, I made a decision to not go through the process again and live a child-free life with my husband. Not only was it draining me emotionally, financially and physically, but it also strained my health. I didn’t feel like I had it in me to go through it all over again.

My husband and I were told there’d be 0 to little chance we’d ever be able to conceive on our own, so after the failed embryo transfer, we decided not to use protection. But the universe had other plans. As soon as I could have sex again as normal, I got pregnant with our son. But even in my pregnancy, I was hesitant about having the baby. My pregnancy journey was anything but easy. I had two grand-mal seizures – one at 18 weeks and the other at 33. I remember the technician not hearing the baby’s heartbeat when she did the ultrasound. Those were the most intense 5 minute I ever experienced. I was fully prepared to have to go through a procedural abortion to terminate the pregnancy. The baby ended up being as healthy as he could be, and now, 2 and a half years later, is thriving.

But would be that wrong of me if I didn’t end up having my child after a failed IVF round? According to society – yes. A friend once told me a story of her friend’s infertility journey. After 10 (!) failed IVF cycles, she and her husband decided that they wouldn’t continue with the process of trying to conceive. She then decided to post about her experience online, and the results that came with were absolutely devastating. She was met with so much shame and scrutiny for her decision – by none other than those struggling with infertility too. They called her selfish for her decision not to conceive. Women asked, ‘How can you live with yourself by saying you could live without conceiving a child into the world?’, ‘Why don’t you try again?’, ‘’How can you be so cruel?’ In hindsight, my friend’s friend faced a very similar cruelty as Jennifer Aniston did; as Lily Collins did…for her own personal choice of what to do with her body.

Paris Hilton, on top of trauma being the reason she decided to go in the scientific route into her planning a family, also wanted to have boy/girl twins or very close in age. She ended up having a boy and a girl 11 months apart. She, too, was shamed for this choice. There’s so much shame associated with needing medical help for child-bearing, with your body not working the way you always assumed it would. The process itself is a harrowing, invasive experience. Many women judged her for wanting to do such a procedure for anything but medical reasons; for knowing exactly what she wanted for herself and sticking by doing what she knew was right in order to get there. But why?

For the most part, the judgement Hilton faced wasn’t because she’d gone through IVF, but because she said it exactly like this: ‘I think it’s just something that most women should do just to have, and then you can pick if you want boys or girls … I want to have twins that are a boy and a girl, so the only way to 100% get that is by making it happen that way.’ So who is this privileged woman telling other women what they should be doing with their bodies? This insensitive remark was intrusive, and yet, so casual. Let’s forget the physical and emotional pain an IVF procedure can cause, but talk more about the financial burden. The average IVF cycle cost anywhere from $12,000 to $17,000 before medication and not including genetic testing, and it may or may not be covered by insurance. It’s money that Paris Hilton has, being worth $300 million, but it’s money that not all other woman in the world has. It’s great that she had the money to go the scientific route to create the family that she wanted, but she’s also not one to tell other women what to do in their own family planning journey.

This is also the reason why Lilly Collins was scrutinized for choosing to use a surrogate in her family planning. Many social media users accused her of being a part of an ‘unethical trend’ that feminists and anti-surrogacycritics argued involves ‘rich people renting women’s bodies’ and is ‘akin to human trafficking’. Some even said she chose the surrogacy route in an effort to stay thin and preserve her body, in what is termed “social surrogacy”. Collins herself didn’t respond to the backlash. But should she have to begin with?

While ED (eating disorders) don’t affect the sperm quality in men, it certainly affects a woman’s menstrual cycle. This is due to the effects of ED on a woman’s hormones, as well as the changes in body weight associated with an eating disorder. And if a woman does get pregnant, there’s a chance she’ll experience intrauterine growth restriction (embryo not growing as it should), miscarriage, or labour complications. We know, through Collins’ own words, that she doesn’t have her menstrual cycle anymore due to her past struggles with bulimia, so she MIGHT’VE also used an egg donor to make the embryo with her husband, as a woman needs to ovulate in order for an ovary to release a mature egg. No matter what the case might’ve been for Collins and how her baby was brought up to the world, or the reason for it, none of it should be of importance. We should all just be happy that she finally got to have the family she so wanted and signed know she could have.

One response to Collins’ and McDowell’s baby announcement was, ‘Rich people using women as incubators once again lmao.’ Boy, what a shortsighted, arrogant comment that was. Surrogacy is unquestionably a practice reserved for a privileged minority. It is expensive, and extortionately so. Medically, the process is just the same as IVF, which in itself is tens of thousands of dollars, just as mentioned; and then there’s the cost of the surrogacy, which can cost up to $100,000, if not more. I understand why, especially as someone who’s gone through the very painful, excruciating process of an embryo transfer. Then there’s the hardships of going through the 9 month of pregnancy, and the surrogate’s family has to go through this with her – for a baby that’s not even hers. What people don’t realize, though, is that hiring a surrogate can also be risky. I had a friend who’d hired a surrogate to help conceive the family she and her husband were so hoping to create. The surrogate they hired was also their egg donor, and the embryo was made with my friend’s husband’s sperm. My friend and her husband practically became best friends with the surrogate, but once the embryo transfer was completed, the surrogate disappeared from the face of the earth (not literally, of course). Luckily, the agency they’d used found out the surrogate didn’t end up getting pregnant, but truth still remained – she wanted to have the baby for herself. My friend and her husband were heartbroken, but also relieved that the surrogate didn’t end up getting pregnant with THEIR baby. They ended up having the baby they so wanted on their own. My friend even risked her own life by going through with her pregnancy. But the details don’t really matter.

Anyone who wants to be a parent should be able to be a parent, fertile or infertile, gay or straight, celebrity or citizen; it shouldn’t make a difference. What also shouldn’t matter are the details of how a couple got there; what path they took to get to parenthood. Collins and her husband might have problems in trying to have kids. It’s no one’s business but their own. The one thing we know is that they are happy and will love their daughter unconditionally. We constantly fall into this trap every time a woman in the public eye has a baby in this way – or any other way that doesn’t society’s norm; a trap that sees us call them out in the name of feminism – a ingrained misogyny at its finest and most hypocritical. At the end of the day, who the f*ck cares? Collins’ and McDowell’s lives are changed for the better now that they have their ‘dream baby’, and it shouldn’t matter to us how they got this ‘dream baby’, or reasons for it. Our lives weren’t changed by the news by one bit, and yet, we act like our lives depended on it.

Collins’ story has sparked great interest, opening up conversations about alternative methods within assisted reproductive treatments, particularly surrogacy. There are various medical and personal reasons why a person or couple may turn to surrogacy. Some of the most common cases include:

• Women with medical conditions that prevent a safe pregnancy (such as uterine absence, Asherman’s syndrome, or heart disease).
• Patients who have experienced multiple implantation failures or recurrent miscarriages.
• Same-sex couples who wish to have a biological child.
• Single individuals who want to become parents.

Surrogacy has always been a controversial subject for more reasons than one, but despite divided opinions, the reality is that surrogacy remains a valid, and even a necessary, option for many individuals who want to become parents but are unable to carry a pregnancy themselves. Lily Collins’ story has brought surrogacy to the forefront of the conversation as one of the available assisted reproduction options. For many people facing difficulties in achieving pregnancy, surrogacy represents a real and safe opportunity to have a baby. Far from everyone facing infertility can afford it. I know my husband and I wouldn’t have been able to afford it. We could barely afford IVF. But the option to use this alternative method is there, and we should all be considered to be lucky that the option is there, available for us.

People forget that Collins had already given it her all in opening up about her past struggles with bulimia, as well as the unknowns of whether or not she could have a family of her own due to the consequences of her eating disorder. As soon as she and McDowell announced the birth of their daughter via a surrogate, people were so quick to judge, automatically assuming that she must’ve used a surrogate because she was too vain/lazy/rich to bother going through pregnancy herself. But…she’d already opened up about her struggles years ago, and she doesn’t owe anyone more than that. She didn’t even owe anyone the explanations she’d already given. Even if she didn’t previously open up about her struggles with bulimia, it would’ve been okay, because at the end of the day, it’s her life, and no one has the right to judge her life’s choices, even if we think that her choice for surrogacy was her laziness. Having a family, no matter what that family looks like, is hard. It’s not something that just shows up at your door. You have to build it, make it, grow it. People, like Collins and her husband do, just want to love. The HOW doesn’t matter. It SHOULDN’T matter. It’s none of our business.