COMMENTARY: The problems with surrogacy

God bless Martina Navratilova. She said an honest, courageous thing about surrogacy.

The Czechoslovakia-born tennis legend was responding to an article on egg donation. The author of the piece had posted it on X, asking rhetorically: “Egg donations — are young women aware of the risks?” Among the author’s concerns were the commodification of women’s bodies, the exploitation of poor women “from most deprived areas” and that at least one egg bank uses an “AI matching service” for screening “donors.”

In a now-deleted X post, Navratilova, who appears on the current season of “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 Navratilova’s first time voicing her opinion on the topic. Last summer, she had posted: “Surrogacy is straight out of ‘Handmaid’s Tale,’” referring to the dystopian novel by Margaret Atwood that has come to usually be a favorite of abortion activists wanting to paint pro-lifers as tyrannical woman-controllers. Navratilova had a decent point with the comparison, as surrogacy exploits and then erases women.

Egg donation, first of all, isn’t really donation. Money is exchanged. And women who need money tend to be the ones who wind up as surrogates.

Navratilova took down her recent tweet after she was blasted for “hypocrisy.” She is married to Julia Lemigova, a former Miss USSR. On “Real Housewives of Miami,” Lemigova and Navratilova voiced their desire to adopt. They put it on hold while Navratilova fought breast and throat cancer.

To their credit, Lemigova and Navratilova had potential children in mind when they made the decision to delay. “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 said: “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.”

Last summer, after getting health clearance, they wound up adopting two boys. “We are the over the moon recognizing the challenges and the rewards for everybody,” Navratilova said in a statement.

Their adoption does not negate any of Navratilova’s surrogacy tweets. Even if they had used a surrogate, she is still entitled to her opinion. I have yet to meet a person who does not sin — do something that they believe/know to be wrong, but do it anyway, for one reason or another (including complicated physiological matters such as addiction). But they didn’t use a surrogate. And that makes it a different category.

The internet commentariat wanted to call Navratilova out — and maybe cancel her if she didn’t back down — because she has an “alternative” family, too. But that just makes clear we really aren’t thinking about the children at all. Even in private adoption, you are not seeking a mother or couple out to have a baby who otherwise would not exist in the world. In adoption, a mother chooses adoption, determining that this is what would be the best for the child. Her child. It’s a form of parenting — choosing an adoption plan. It’s obviously parenting that involves separation, a trauma, even in the best of circumstances. But it is dealing with a life already in the oven, so to speak.

Surrogacy is something very different. We can argue about same-sex adoption and single adoption. But none of these involve paying for the hyperinflation of eggs in a young woman to get as many as possible, likely doing long-term damage to her fertility. They are not paying a woman to live through the gestation of a child only to give that child to another as a financial transaction.

God bless Martina Navratilova. In a time when people are encouraged to have their own truths, we need people to acknowledge that there may well be actual truth, and right and wrong. We may not agree on all of it. But we must 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 get lost in adult concerns — often when the adults are acting like children.

Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book “A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living.” Contact her at klopez@nationalreview.com.