The Curious Lives of Surrogates

Like Myers, military wives are largely young stay-at-home moms who've completed their own families before they hit 28. IVF clinics and surrogate agencies in Texas and California say military spouses make up 50 percent of their carriers. "In the military, we have that mentality of going to extremes, fighting for your country, risking your life," says Jennifer Hansen, 25, a paralegal who's married to Army Sgt. Chase Hansen. They live in Lincoln, Neb., and have two young kids, and Chase has been deployed to Iraq for two of the past five years. "I think that being married to someone in the military embeds those values in you. I feel I'm taking a risk now, in less of a way than he is, but still a risk with my life and body to help someone." Surrogate agencies target the population by dropping leaflets in the mailboxes of military housing complexes, such as those around San Diego's Camp Pendleton, and placing ads in on-base publications such as the Military Times and Military Spouse. Now surrogate agencies say they are solicited by ad reps from these publications. Military wives who do decide to become surrogates can earn more with one pregnancy than their husbands' annual base pay (which ranges for new enlistees from $16,080 to $28,900). "Military wives can't sink their teeth into a career because they have to move around so much," says Melissa Brisman of New Jersey, a lawyer who specializes in reproductive and family issues, and heads the largest surrogacy firm on the East Coast. "But they still want to contribute, do something positive. And being a carrier only takes a year—that gives them enough time between postings."

Dawne Dill, 32, was a high-school English teacher before she married her husband, Travis, a Navy chief, and settled in Maryland. She's now a full-time mother with two boys of her own, and is carrying twins for a European couple who prefer to remain anonymous. Dill is due in May. The attraction of surrogacy for her, apart from wanting to feel useful, was that the money could help pay for an occupational-therapy gym for her older son, who is autistic. "We're thinking of building the gym in our basement so he can get to it whenever he needs," says Dill. She worried that having an autistic child might disqualify her as a surrogate, but fortunately the agency was unconcerned. "They said because I was not genetically related to the twins, that it was just not an issue, and my IPs [intended parents] never brought it up to me personally. I assume they're OK with it, but maybe think it's too touchy of a subject to discuss openly with me," says Dill. As a prepartum gift, the couple sent Dawne and her husband to the Super Bowl.

Military wives are attractive candidates because of their health insurance, Tricare, which is provided by three different companies—Humana, TriWest and Health Net Federal Services—and has some of the most comprehensive coverage for surrogates in the industry. Fertility agencies know this, and may offer a potential surrogate with this health plan an extra $5,000. Last year military officials asked for a provision in the 2008 defense authorization bill to cut off coverage for any medical procedures related to surrogate pregnancy. They were unsuccessful—there are no real data on how much the government spends on these cases. Tricare suggests that surrogate mothers who receive payment for their pregnancy should declare the amount they're receiving, which can then be deducted from their coverage. But since paid carriers have no incentive to say anything, most don't. "I was told by multiple people—congressional staff, doctors and even ordinary taxpayers—that they overheard conversations of women bragging about how easy it was to use Tricare coverage to finance surrogacy and delivery costs and make money on the side," says Navy Capt. Patricia Buss, who recently left the Defense Department and now holds a senior position with Health Net Federal Services. The subject of Tricare surrogacy coverage is becoming a hot topic throughout the military world; on Web sites such as militarySOS .com, bloggers with sign-on names such as "Ms. Ordinance" and "ProudArmyWife" fiercely debate the subject.

Surrogacy is not just an American debate—it is global. Thanks to reproductive science, Gernisha Myers, who is African-American, is now 18 weeks pregnant with the twins of Karin and Lars, a white couple who live in Germany. They are one of many international couples who turned to America to solve their infertility issues because surrogacy is not allowed in their own country. Couples have come to the United States from many countries, including Iceland, Canada, France, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Australia, Spain and Dubai in recent years. Although some couples are now turning to India for cheaper fertility solutions—yes, even surrogacy is being outsourced at a tenth of the price—the trend has yet to diminish America's draw as a baby mecca.

Karin and Lars picked Myers after they read her agency profile. Myers says that the psychological screening is one of the most grueling, invasive and odd parts of the process. "The [questionnaire] asked some weird questions, like 'Do you think about killing people sometimes?' Or 'Would you want to be a mountain ranger if you could?' Or 'Do you find yourself happier than most?' But when they asked 'Are you afraid you're going to get attached to the babies?' I said, 'In a way, yes, even though I know they're not mine.' They said, 'Believe it or not, some GCs [gestational carriers] never feel any kind of bond.' I found that hard to believe back then, but now I know what they're talking about. I don't feel that motherly bond. I feel more like a caring babysitter."

Myers's psychological detachment has a lot to do with the fact that, like most carriers today, she's in no way biologically related to the baby inside her—the legacy of the "Baby M" case. The most recent significant case involving a surrogacy dispute, Johnson v. Calvert in 1993, was resolved in favor of the intended parents, and against a surrogate who wanted to keep the baby. John Weltman, president of Circle Surrogacy in Boston, says that parents who work with a reputable agency have a "99 percent chance of getting a baby and a 100 percent chance of keeping it." But up until just about two years ago, Weltman says every single intended parent asked, "Will she [the carrier] try and keep the baby?" Now, he says, a third of his clients don't even mention it.