Andy Cohen says his daughter Lucy was one of the first babies to be born via gestational surrogacy in New York.
via Page Six:
“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,” the “Watch What Happens Live” host told Amanda Hirsch on the May 30 episode of Dear Media’s “Not Skinny But Not Fat” podcast.
Explaining that gestational surrogacy was illegal in the Empire State in 2020, Cohen added that he “helped” get the law passed, which allowed for the birth of his daughter, now 1, in his residing state.
Per the New York Department of Health, gestational surrogacy differs from traditional surrogacy in that the surrogate does not provide their own egg for fertilization.
The Bravo host — whose son Ben, now 4, was born via gestational surrogate in Los Angeles on Feb. 4, 2019, — praised then-Governor Andrew Cuomo, who “really made it happen” when helping to pass the law.
“But also, it was good because it gave me a lot more time to kind of get good at it with Ben,” he shared, emphasizing that Ben “loves” his younger sister.
In the weeks before Ben’s birth, Cohen notably relocated to Los Angeles, recording “WWHL” from the West Coast, so that he could legally facilitate the birth of his son.
The “Daddy Diaries: The Year I Grew Up” author shared in a June 2022 interview on Sirius XM’s “Jeff Lewis Live” that, despite using different surrogates, Ben and Lucy are “biological siblings” thanks to the gestational surrogacy.
He also joked that the “couple” of leftover embryos that he has might come in handy for his children in the future.
“You know what I’m thinking? This is crazy, but if either of [my children] cannot have kids, maybe in 20 years they’ll defrost their sibling and raise them,” Cohen said, asking, “Is that a weird thought?”
The things money can do, right? Hopefully in the future access to starting a family for those who want to but are unable — for whatever reason — will become more accessible.
