NEED TO KNOW
Andy Cohen is hitting back after Martina Navratilova made recent comments about her beliefs on surrogacy
The former tennis pro shared a post on X in July claiming that she believes “surrogacy is wrong”
Cohen called her take “ill-informed and wrong” during his radio show
Andy Cohen is slamming Martina Navratilova over her recent comments on surrogacy.
The Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen host, 57, who welcomed his daughter Lucy and son Ben through surrogacy, hit back after Navratilova came under fire after saying she believes “surrogacy is wrong” in a post on X.
“I asked Julia about it on WWHL,” Cohen said during an Aug. 5 episode of SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live of Navratilova’s wife, Julia Lemigova. “Julia and I have discussed this offline. Martina will not be at the Miami reunion, so I will not be asking Martina about this.”
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Andy Cohen/Instagram
Andy Cohen and his kids
After Navratilova’s comments went viral, Lemigova appeared on Cohen’s talk show and addressed her wife’s comments. “Well, you know, Martina and I share a bed, but we don’t share a brain. And we not always agree on different views, but I believe in surrogacy,” she clarified.
“You know, it was kind of put out of context,” Lemigova said at the time. “And I completely disagree with her comments.”
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On his radio show, Cohen said that while he won’t be speaking with Navratilova, he does have additional questions for Lemigova, who stars on The Real Housewives of Miami.
“I’m sure it will come up again at the [RHOM] reunion, because guess what? I believe Lisa Hochstein had major complications with her last pregnancy and possibly need to use [a surrogate],” he said.
Manny Hernandez/WireImage
Julia Lemigova, Martina Navratilova
The dad of two also slammed the comments Lemigova made during his talk show and said that Navratilova’s stance was clear from her posts.
“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,” he said.
“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,” said Cohen. “That’s just ill-informed and dumb. And yes, we will talk about it at the reunion.”
“Basically, she’s uninformed on the issue, so I just think she’s not informed,” he continued. “It’s a bad take. What can I tell you? She’s just wrong.”
Charles Sykes/Bravo
Julia Lemigova, Andy Cohen and Martina Navratilova
Cohen has previously shared that his daughter Lucy was “one of the first” gestational surrogacies in New York and explained that he’d helped to try and get the laws passed.
“I was going to Albany … [gestational] surrogacy was illegal in the state of New York until [2020] and I helped get that law passed,” he explained on an episode of Amanda Hirsch’s Dear Media podcast Not Skinny But Not Fat. “And Governor Cuomo, he really made it happen.”
According to the New York State Department of Health, gestational surrogacies — a type of surrogacy where the surrogate does not use their own egg for fertilization — were illegal in New York until 2020. Although traditional surrogacy has been legal in the state since 1992, it wasn’t until recently that the Child-Parent Security Act was passed, allowing for more family-building opportunities through gestational surrogacy.
“So I went to Albany a couple of times and I was out there, you know, trying to get it passed,” Cohen continued. “I wanted to have the baby in New York, or I wanted my surrogate to have the baby in New York. And so Lucy was one of the first surrogate babies born here.”
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