Newsweek’s cover story this week is about the experiences of women who gestate babies for others. Here’s a clip from the piece by Lorraine Ali and Raina Kelley:

Very little is understood about the world of the surrogate. That’s why we talked to dozens of women across America who are, or have been, gestational carriers. What we found is surprising and defies stereotyping. The experiences of this vast group of womenincluding a single mom from Murrietta, Calif., a military spouse from Glen Burnie, Md., and a small-business owner from Dallasrange from the wonderful and life-affirming to the heart-rending. One surrogate, Scanlon, is the godmother of the twins she bore, while another still struggles because she has little contact with the baby she once carried. Some resent being told what to eat or drink; others feel more responsible bearing someone else’s child than they did with their own. Their motivations are varied: one upper-middle-class carrier in California said that as a child she watched a family member suffer with infertility and wished she could help. A working-class surrogate from Idaho said it was the only way her family could afford things they never could before, like a $6,000 trip to Disney World. But all were agreed that the grueling IVF treatments, morning sickness, bed rest, C-sections and stretch marks were worth it once they saw their intended parent hold the child, or children (multiples are common with IVF), for the first time. “Being a surrogate is like giving an organ transplant to someone,” says Jennifer Cantor, “only before you die, and you actually get to see their joy.”

One of the interesting angles turned by Ali and Kelley is that women from military families have become a go-to population for surrogacy agencies:

… 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 yearthat gives them enough time between postings.”

-Greg Dahlmann