The Pentagon has offered to start freezing eggs and sperm of young military service men to make them stay and serve their country longer. According to Military Times, approximately 72% of soldiers who enlisted are in their 20s and 30s, which can be considered an appropriate age to start a family.
The Pentagon is worried that these young service men will leave to have a family since they are already in their prime age to do so. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said that the program, which will be a two-year pilot program, will give service men who want to start a family more option without having to leave the military. However, Secretary Carter also said that they are probing more on the moral and legal issues this program has already brewed.
A professor of bioethics at New York University's Langone Medical Center, Arthur Caplan stated that there are a lot of question the program needs to consider before it launched. "Freezing sperm and eggs is not like freezing chicken for dinner," he said.
There were several questions Dr. Caplan asked that he said needs to be addressed, like, "What will happen if the soldier with frozen eggs or sperm dies, will his wife be able to use it still? Or what if the mother of the soldier wants a grandchild but the wife doesn't, can the frozen sperm used with a surrogate? And what happens if the company housing your sperm or eggs goes bankrupt?"
A spokesperson from the Pentagon refused to comment on these questions stating that details of the program are being put together. The Department of Defense is expected to draft the program in a memo from Secretary Carter in the weeks to come.
The New York Times reported that thousands of military men in Iraq and Afghanistan usually suffer injuries to their reproductive organs. However, when soldiers have sperm or eggs frozen in storage, it will still be possible for them to have children despite the damage to their genitals.
Military wives and some advocacy group urged the Defense and Veterans affair to pay for advanced reproductive technologies for those military personnel who suffered infertility while on duty. They also said that sperm and egg freezing should be done before deployment.
At the moment, there are seven military treatment facilities who offer artificial insemination and In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) to those personnel and their spouses who are in active-duty as long as they meet the criteria. Those services and others, including sperm extraction and embryo preservation, are available at no charge to severely wounded personnel on active-duty and their spouses.
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