Every morning I watch the first 10-15 minutes of Good Morning America before going to work. Today, one of their topics was Military Wives as Surrogates (click on it if you want to see the article). I didn't have a chance to watch that segment, but when I got home this evening, I read the article.
Next, I did some number crunching. I wanted to get a rough percentage of military wives that serve as surragates. (Stay with me, I'll get to my point.) According to Wikipidea, (I know, not the most reliable sorce, but it will work) there are a little over 1,477,000 members of the military. And PRB reports that in 2009 52% of adults (over 18) were married. We'll just say, 50% of military members are married (I'm sure that there's some site that shows this, but I couldn't find it quickly). I'll say that 5% (personal estimate) are women military members with male spouses who obviously can't be surragates. So, we'll say there are about 664,650 military wives. That's just my guess.
Good Morning America reports that there 1000 surragacies a year, 15-20% are military wives, making that about 150-200 military wives who serve as surragates a year. That's 0.03% of military wives who serve as military wives.
The whole reason for the segment was discussing that military wives who serve as surrogates are using tax payers money (Tricare) to pay for the medical costs. Not all military wives do this. There is a clause in TriCare that says that TriCare can ask for the money back. They even have a wife who reports she doesn't use TriCare to cover her medical costs.
So, now to my rant. I was really bothered by this segment. I really felt that it was made to look like military wives cheat the system all the time. It's .03% of military wives. That's a tiny number of women that do it. Why not focus on the good of the military wives. Like the strength a military wives must have to endure her husband being deployed and carrying someone else's child. Yes, she gets money, but I don't think any amount of money (in my opinion) could make a deployment easier. Your husband is still in danger and you are still alone and you are dealing with a pregnancy. Show me one women that will happily endure all three of these things for $30,000 and never once have a negative feeling because I want to know what her secret is.
Okay, that's my rant. Do any other military wives find this offensive?
1 comment:
I do find this offensive. I haven't put a ton of thought into it since I'm commenting immediately after finishing reading your post. BUT, I don't think anyone should be criticizing military wives. I'm sure there are plenty more shady things going on with military wives that people could be criticizing...I don't think surrogacy should be one of them. Again, I haven't researched any of this or even read the article you linked to...this is just my initial reaction.
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