Surrogacy: Andy Cohen calls Martina Navratilova’s take “ill‑informed and dumb”

The spark: a tweet, a rebuke, and a split at home

One tweet lit a fire under a debate that never really cools. Martina Navratilova, 68, declared on social media that “surrogacy is just wrong. Sometimes you can’t have it all,” then deleted the post after blowback. By then, the post had already done its job: everyone had picked a side.

Andy Cohen, 57, didn’t hesitate. On his Tuesday, August 5 broadcast of Andy Cohen Live on SiriusXM, he called the stance “ill‑informed and dumb,” adding that the tennis legend was “just wrong.” Cohen wasn’t speaking in the abstract. He’s the father of two children born via surrogacy and has spent years arguing that better laws and safeguards help parents, surrogates, and kids alike.

Cohen’s personal connection matters here. His son Benjamin was born in 2019 and his daughter Lucy in 2022, both via gestational surrogacy. He’s also been a visible advocate in New York, where the state’s Child‑Parent Security Act (CPSA) finally legalized compensated gestational surrogacy with strict protections. Signed in 2020 and effective from 2021, the law set standards around surrogate health care, independent legal counsel, and clear parentage orders—rules aimed at avoiding the very harms critics worry about.

The twist? Navratilova’s own household isn’t aligned. Her wife, Julia Lemigova—real‑estate entrepreneur and cast member of The Real Housewives of Miami—sat on Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live and said she “completely” disagreed with her spouse. “Martina and I share a bed, but we don’t share a brain,” she said, backing surrogacy as a family‑building choice. Cohen later noted on air that he and Lemigova had “discussed this offline.”

For anyone hoping Cohen might press Navratilova directly, that chance isn’t coming soon. He said she won’t be at the Miami reunion taping, which closes off the obvious venue for a face‑to‑face exchange.

What started as a pointed tweet is now a wider moment: a TV host and a sports icon pulling at a fault line inside LGBTQ communities and far beyond—how we form families, who gets to decide, and where ethics and law meet real lives.

• Navratilova posted that surrogacy is “just wrong,” then deleted the message.
• Cohen called the take “ill‑informed and dumb” on his SiriusXM show.
• Lemigova publicly broke with her wife’s position on Watch What Happens Live.
• Navratilova won’t appear at the RHOM reunion, limiting direct exchange.

The reaction online was fast and loud. Supporters of Navratilova said her view is about principle: they worry about commercializing pregnancy and fear exploitation. Supporters of Cohen saw a familiar pattern—judgment falling hardest on people who already face long odds to build a family, including single parents and same‑sex couples.

Strip away the celebrity names and you’re left with a tough policy puzzle, one many countries and U.S. states haven’t solved the same way.

What’s behind the surrogacy debate

Surrogacy isn’t one thing; it’s a set of practices shaped by law, money, medicine, and culture. Much of the moral friction comes down to three basic questions: who is protected, who is paid, and who decides.

First, the law. In parts of the United States, compensated gestational surrogacy is legal under tight rules. New York’s CPSA is one of the more detailed frameworks: surrogates must have independent legal counsel paid by the intended parents; clinics and contracts must meet medical and ethical standards; parentage is established before birth; and surrogates keep the final say over their own health care. Other states allow surrogacy with fewer rules, and a handful still restrict or discourage it.

Globally, the map is even more scattered. Countries like France, Germany, and Spain ban commercial surrogacy. The U.K. and Canada allow altruistic surrogacy but limit payments to expenses. In places that do allow compensation, regulators try to balance choice with guardrails so financial pressure doesn’t override consent. Whether those guardrails work is the core of the argument.

Second, the ethics. Critics worry that paying for pregnancy risks exploiting women with fewer resources. They also question whether any contract can fully cover the surprises of a real pregnancy—medical complications, selective reduction decisions, or disagreements over delivery. Some argue that the emotional weight of carrying a child simply doesn’t fit into a legal deal.

Supporters counter that bans don’t erase demand; they just push people to jurisdictions with weaker oversight. They point to surrogates who describe the experience as chosen, informed, and valued—especially when the system pays fairly, provides comprehensive health care, and guarantees the surrogate’s right to make medical decisions. In that view, strong regulation is the ethical middle path.

Third, the lived reality. For many LGBTQ families, and for some people facing infertility or medical risk, surrogacy is the practical route to having a biological child. That’s why the issue hits so close to home for Cohen and his audience. When he labeled Navratilova’s take “ill‑informed,” he was pointing at the detail: the difference between unregulated baby markets and regulated medical care with contracts, counseling, and courts.

It’s also why Lemigova’s public split from her wife matters. She sits at the junction of two worlds: reality television, where personal stories meet public scrutiny, and LGBTQ family life, which often collides with policy gaps. By saying she disagreed, she signaled that this isn’t a neat, partisan fight. Couples don’t need to share a view on every moral question—even one this personal—to share a life.

There’s a media layer to all this too. A short post can collapse a nuanced subject into a viral flashpoint. “Sometimes you can’t have it all” is a clean line. But within surrogacy, the real battles are long and technical: insurance coverage, medical risk, parental rights across state lines, citizenship for children born abroad, and the fine print of who pays what, and when. That’s not tweet‑friendly, but it’s where the stakes live.

New York’s path shows how slow this can be. Before 2021, intended parents there often worked with surrogates in other states, then wrestled with parentage paperwork back home. The CPSA tried to end that limbo by spelling out each party’s rights and duties. Cohen and other advocates argued that bringing the process into the open—with legal counsel, mental‑health screening, and court orders—was safer than pretending the demand didn’t exist.

Even with rules, hard cases still happen: medical scares that put the surrogate’s health first, difficult prenatal diagnoses, or intended parents’ finances falling apart mid‑pregnancy. The best laws aim to plan for those edge cases. The worst outcomes usually come when the deal is informal, the payments are under‑the‑table, or no one is clear on what happens if things go wrong.

On the other side, opponents ask a simple question: if money changes hands, can consent ever be free of pressure? It’s a fair challenge. Advocates respond that many forms of paid care—nursing, childcare, clinical trials—carry risk and require strict ethics; the answer isn’t to ban them outright but to regulate them tightly. Where to draw that line is the core policy fight.

There’s also a sports‑and‑celebrity angle. Navratilova is one of the most decorated athletes in history, a longtime LGBTQ rights figure who’s never shied away from blunt takes. Cohen is a high‑visibility TV host with a personal stake and a platform built on unscripted conversation. When these two collide, it pulls the debate out of policy journals and into living rooms, where casual viewers hear terms like “gestational carrier,” “parentage order,” and “altruistic vs. compensated” for the first time.

What happens next is predictable and still meaningful. Expect more on‑air explanations from Cohen about how his own surrogacy journeys worked and why he lobbied for the CPSA. Expect Navratilova’s defenders to say she voiced a moral conviction, and that deleting a tweet doesn’t erase a principle. Expect LGBTQ voices to disagree—loudly—without fitting neat ideological boxes.

For families considering surrogacy, the noise can be confusing. The practical advice from attorneys and clinics tends to sound the same: choose jurisdictions with clear laws; ensure everyone has independent counsel; set medical decision‑making authority in writing; confirm comprehensive insurance; and build a contingency plan if something goes sideways. That’s the infrastructure that turns emotion into a workable path.

For now, the episode lives where a lot of modern culture does: at the intersection of a viral post, a radio mic, and a reality‑TV confession. A legend said a hard thing. A host shot back. A spouse took a different side. And a messy, real debate over how families are made moved from the margins to the center of the room again.