Surrogacy recruiters target U.S. military wives

San Diego is home to one of the largest Navy bases in the United States. The combination of nearly 40,000 married Navy personnel and a high concentration of surrogacy providers is no coincidence, said Kathy Sloan, a third-party reproduction consultant and former program director for the Council for Responsible Genetics.

Sloan estimates military wives represent about 15 to 20 percent of surrogate mothers in the United States. And in large military base locations like San Diego, the number can increase to 50 percent.

Because surrogate motherhood is largely undocumented and unregulated, an exact number is “virtually impossible” to attain, Sloan admitted. But the congregation of surrogacy providers around large military bases in Texas, California, and Florida, along with heavy advertising in military publications, provides circumstantial evidence that surrogacy providers are actively recruiting military wives as surrogates.

While surrogacy providers and military wives may see an opportunity to help an infertile couple have a child, others view surrogacy as a threat to women’s and children’s rights. One group critical of the practice launched an international campaign this week to ban it.

Good surrogate candidates generally fit similar profiles around the world. In the United States, military wives are ideal, said Jennifer Lahl, president of the Center for Bioethics and Culture. Surrogacy providers want evidence that candidates can successfully carry a child to term. Military wives often are young and already have given birth to at least one child. They are driven by the military’s mentality of service, which fits with helping another couple have a child. And because military families move frequently, wives can face difficulty finding supplemental income. A nine-month pregnancy can seem like an easy way to double a military family’s income.

For surrogacy providers, a military wife’s access to the TRICARE health benefit program is an enticing bonus, Lahl said. TRICARE officially doesn’t cover surrogate pregnancies, and the government “has the right to recover funds expended on such claims,” Defense Health Agency spokesman Kevin Dwyer told me. But the policy is unenforceable, Sloan said. Unless a woman reveals it, TRICARE doctors may never know a woman is pregnant with a child that isn’t hers. For surrogacy providers, TRICARE’s taxpayer-provided benefit package means lower costs on a surrogate’s healthcare bill, Sloan said.

Devon Cravener, whose husband is ex-military, decided to become a surrogate partly for the income and partly because she wanted to help another couple.

“I’d carried my two babies with zero complications, so I thought, ‘Why not give this gift to other parents?’” she told The Telegraph.

But a growing number of international organizations are speaking out against surrogacy, saying its problems outweigh the benefits. The #StopSurrogacyNow campaign launched earlier this week has already gained support from thousands of people represented by 16 groups from 18 countries. The campaign seeks to educate the public about surrogacy’s problems and encourage the global community to ban the practice, not just regulate it.

“We need to put pressure on governmental agencies around the world to prohibit surrogacy,” Lahl said. “You don’t regulate exploiting people.”

Lahl’s group and Sloan helped organize the campaign. The diverse mix of its supporters underscores the wide opposition to surrogacy. Individuals include former surrogates, feminists, and LGBT activists. Organizational supporters include the European Women’s Lobby in Belgium, Coordination of Associations for the Right to Abortion and Contraception in France, and Against Child Trafficking in the Netherlands.

“A woman is a human being not a machine,” said Shagufta Omar, president of the Pakistan Chapter of the International Muslim Women Union. “Disconnecting both mother and the child from each other is the violation of the human rights of both.”

The campaign maintains that surrogacy entails health risks for the surrogate and the egg donor, if the intended parents choose not to use their own egg and sperm. Some risks include Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome, reproductive cancers, and pre-eclampsia.

Surrogacy arrangements often exploit poor women through coercion, restrictive and poor living conditions, and sub-standard healthcare, according to the campaign. Many surrogates are treated like “indentured persons” while pregnant.

And the children face developmental risks because surrogacy providers encourage the surrogates to avoid bonding with the child, a key component to fetal development. They also face potential “quality control” practices, like sex selection or abandonment for disabilities, as recently occurred in Thailand. And contractually buying a child through surrogacy flirts closely with child trafficking, the campaign claims.

The European Parliament has already declared surrogacy an extreme form of exploitation, and several European countries have banned the practice. But in other countries, including the United States, surrogacy remains largely unregulated.

“No one has a right to a child,” Sloan said. “From a human rights perspective, that is flawed to say the least.”