Last month, tennis legend Martina Navratilova expressed her feelings in opposition to surrogacy, and TV personality Andy Cohen — who used surrogates to obtain his children — lashed out in response, calling her “ill-informed and dumb.”
Key Takeaways:
- In July, Navratilova posted a now-deleted tweet criticizing gestational surrogacy.
- Navratilova has been a longtime critic of the practice, saying it is straight out of “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
- TV personality Andy Cohen has two children whom he obtained through an embryo donor and a pair of surrogates, as well as other children frozen at the embryonic stage of development.
- He lashed out in response to Navratilova, calling her “ill-informed and dumb.”
The Details:
Martina Navratilova is one of the best tennis players of all time. She is openly gay and is married to Julia Lemigova, a former Miss USSR and cast member of the reality show “The Real Housewives of Miami.” Navratilova has at times held views that differ from those usually associated with the larger LGBTQIA+ community — like her views opposing surrogacy.
In 2024, for example, she referred to surrogacy as “Straight out of [The] Handmaid’s Tale” — a dystopian fiction novel in which fertile women are forced to become breeders for wealthy infertile couples.
Straight out of Handmaid’s Tale… https://t.co/ZyUMXsFG1w
— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) August 26, 2024
This July, Navratilova responded to an article about the dangers of egg donation, tweeting, “Surrogacy is just wrong. Sometimes you can’t have it all.”
Andy Cohen, a gay radio and TV personality who is the executive producer of the “Real Housewives” franchise, has embraced surrogacy. He chose to create an unknown number of embryos — he said he “can’t remember” how many he has — and had two children as a single father. On a recent episode of Sirius XM’s “Andy Cohen Live,” he clapped back at Navratilova.
Cohen recalled speaking with Lemigova about Navratilova’s statements, and she said she disagreed with the remarks. “Martina and I share a bed, but we don’t share a brain,” Lemigova said. “We [do] not always agree on different views. I believe in surrogacy, and it was kind of put out of [context], and I completely disagree with her comment.”
Cohen then mentioned Lemigova’s comments, saying he would be addressing them with her in person:
I asked Julia about it on Watch What Happens Live. Julia and I have discussed this offline. Martina will not be at the Miami reunion, so I will not be asking Martina about this.
I’m sure it will come up again at the Miami reunion because, guess what? I believe Lisa Hochstein had her, had major complications with her last pregnancy and possibly needed to use [a surrogate]. You know, Julia did say on ‘Watch What Happens Live,’ and we were live, and I didn’t want to start debating it, and I will ask her this at the reunion; what she said is Martina’s tweet was kind of misinterpreted or misrepresented.
But Cohen refused to accept Lemigova’s explanation.
“What Martina tweeted was ‘surrogacy is wrong.’ So I don’t know how that’s … She said, ‘Surrogacy is just wrong. Sometimes you can’t have it all.’ Well, here’s the deal: That’s just ill-informed and dumb. And yes, we will talk about it at the reunion,” he said. “Basically, she’s uninformed on the issue, so I just think she’s not informed. It’s a bad take. What can I tell you? She’s just wrong.”
Why It Matters:
As Navratilova pointed out herself, surrogacy does indeed mirror the “Handmaid’s Tale” in many ways; in the process, both women and children are dehumanized, turned into products to be bought and sold — to wealthy people like Cohen.
Surrogates are typically low-income women, and many live in countries with high poverty rates, like Ukraine, which have become hotspots for surrogacy. These women are at higher risk of experiencing pregnancy complications like gestational diabetes, hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, and bleeding complications after birth.
And the wealthy buyers frequently treat the women’s bodies as if they are mere incubators, gestating made-to-order products for buyers. These would-be parents have even been known to buy insurance in case the woman’s body doesn’t perform on demand as expected; some have coerced women into abortions if a prenatal disability is diagnosed or if the surrogate is carrying multiples. Sometimes the reason is simply that the baby is the “wrong” gender from the one the buyers expected to receive.
Babies conceived through IVF also have a higher risk for certain complications, like low birth weight and prematurity. It’s also known that separating babies from their birth mother — whether that mother is biologically related or not — causes immense trauma for that child which may even permanently alter adult brain function.
While separation trauma is also created by adoption, adoption does not create a child with the explicit intention of separating that child from his or her birth mother. A child born through surrogacy, however, is created with this exact intent, and is often also robbed of his or her medical history, heritage, and background.
To make matters worse, there is little-to-no concern for the well-being of children created through surrogacy. While adoption requires extensive background checks and training for prospective parents, individuals who purchase babies through IVF and surrogacy can do so with essentially no oversight, as evidenced by the fact that even sex offenders have obtained children through surrogacy due to the lack of any background checks.
Many adults conceived through these methods are not often supportive of them. According to a Harvard University study, 62% of children conceived through donor technologies say the use of those technologies are unethical and immoral. One woman told the pro-children’s-rights organization Them Before Us, “Somehow, somewhere, my parents developed the idea that they deserved to have a baby, and it didn’t matter how much it cost, how many times it took, or how many died in the process. They deserved a child. And with an attitude like that, by the time I was born they thought they deserved to have the perfect child… as Dad defined a perfect child. And since they deserved a child, I was their property to be controlled, not a person or a gift to be treasured.”
Perhaps Navratilova isn’t dumb or uninformed; perhaps she is aware that surrogacy has all these issues and more, and is a process that puts the actual needs of children behind the desires of adults.
The Bottom Line:
Andy Cohen clearly has an emotional investment in surrogacy, so his harsh response to Navratilova is not surprising. However, becoming a parent through surrogacy does not excuse it, and Navratilova is not wrong.
Surrogacy is unethical, immoral, and harmful to women and children — even if it hurts an entitled celebrity’s feelings to say so.
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