Children’s welfare must be our priority.
Children’s welfare must be our priority.
G od bless Martina Navratilova for her saying an honest, courageous word about surrogacy, even though she had to take it back. I’m grateful that she tried, and I’m sorry about the backlash she took in response.
The Czechoslovakia-born tennis legend — she won Wimbledon nine times — had responded to an article on egg donation: “‘Young Women’s Bodies Are Not Resources To Be Mined’: MPs Back Changes To Egg Donation Rules.” The author of the piece had posted about it on X and asked rhetorically: “Egg donations — are young women aware of the risks?” She went on to note some “cross-party MP concerns” about surrogacy in the U.K., concerns such as the commodification of women’s bodies, the exploitation of poor women “from most deprived areas,” and the use by at least one egg bank of an “AI matching service” for screening “donors.”
In an X post that has since been deleted, Navratilova — whose wife, Julia Lemigova, a former Miss USSR, stars in Real Housewives of Miami (you can’t make these things up) — simply wrote: “Surrogacy is just wrong. Sometimes you can’t have it all.”
This was not the first time Navratilova voiced her opinion on the topic. Last summer, she had posted that surrogacy is “straight out of Handmaid’s Tale,” referring to the dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood (and recent TV series) that has become a favorite cultural reference of abortion activists who claim that pro-lifers seek to use government to control women’s bodies. Navratilova, however, made a decent point with her comparison, as surrogacy exploits — and then erases — women.
Do you remember, for instance, when former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced that he and his husband were parents? He actually posted a photo of himself and Chasten on a hospital bed, as if they had gone through pregnancy (work that an invisible mother had done). The real mother would not be bonding with the child who had been nourished by her in her womb and had forever changed her body. Hers was only a womb for rent. And never mind the needs of that child.
Egg donation, moreover, isn’t donation. Ivy League students are offered serious money for their highly desirable eggs. Definitely a way to pay off some college loans. Women who need money tend to be the ones who wind up as surrogates: The average yearly salary in Ukraine, for example, is about $6,500, and a surrogate will usually make around $25,000. (You can find cases of well-off women who have been surrogates for their friends, but that’s not the norm.) This is likely part of the reason Navratilova made her most recent post.
Navratilova took down that tweet after she was blasted for “hypocrisy.” At some point during her career, she had described herself as bisexual; eventually, as a lesbian. In Real Housewives of Miami, she and Lemigova voiced their desire to adopt. They put it on hold while Navratilova fought breast and throat cancer. Last summer, when Navratilova commented on surrogacy, she had done so in response to actress Nicole Kidman and her husband Keith Urban’s resorting to surrogacy. “I don’t agree with surrogacy, regardless of who is doing it,” Navratilova wrote. “But nice try trying to make it personal.”
To their credit, Lemigova and Navratilova had their potential children in mind when they made the decision to delay adoption. “When you’re adopting a child, it has to be about the child,” Lemigova said. “And right now, it’s everything about Martina, and for her getting healthy.” She added: “You know, we were thinking any moment, the agency would call and give us happy news that we’re going to have a baby. Instead we are fighting two cancers.” Children must be the priority when talking about child welfare, foster care, and adoption, but they aren’t always.
Last summer, after Navratilova’s health improved, she and Lemigova adopted two boys. Their decision to adopt does not contradict any of Navratilova’s tweets about surrogacy. They didn’t use a surrogate, but she would have been entitled to her opinion even if they had done so. (I have yet to meet a person who does not sin — we often do things that we believe or know to be wrong.) Many on the World Wide Web, where everyone’s a commentator on everything, wanted to call Navratilova out on her opinion about surrogacy — and maybe cancel her if she didn’t back down — because she has an “alternative” family, too. But that just makes clear that these critics aren’t really thinking about the children at all.
Surrogacy involves seeking out a mother or couple to have a baby — who otherwise would not exist — for you. Adoption often involves a mother who has determined that this is what would be best for her child. It’s a parenting decision. It can obviously involve separation and trauma, even in the best of circumstances, but it prioritizes a life that already exists. We can argue about adoption by same-sex couples, single individuals, women over 50, etc. But in none of these cases would someone be paying for a young woman’s eggs, likely doing long-term damage to her fertility, or paying a woman to live through the gestation of a child only to give that child to another as part of a financial transaction.
God bless Martina Navratilova. None of these personal and family decisions are easy; life can be a mess. At a time when people are encouraged to have their own truths, we need to acknowledge that there may very well be an actual truth, as well as right and wrong. We may not agree on all of it. But, goodness, fight for everyone’s right to voice an opinion on a matter as serious as surrogacy — for the sake of truth, exploited women, and the children who are overlooked in adult concerns when adults, sometimes, act like children.
This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.