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| Pregnant in combat? Not anymore you're not! A Marine's thoughts... |
| 2009-12-23 |
| The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Major General Anthony Cucolo passed a new policy which may mean time in the brig for soldiers, airmen, and Marines who become pregnant while on active duty in a combat zone. This issue presents so many moral, tactical, and ethical problems I canÂ’t possibly cover them all. There is the issue of personal freedom, the issue of husband and wife deployed together, the issue of rape, the issue of accidental pregnancyÂ… Where do we draw the line? LetÂ’s talk about the nature of military service... |
| Posted by:Omereth Ulereck4420 |
| #12 Right Chunky, the question is how to square that vision with real life here on this planet where humans are the top of the food chain, dont always do what they are told, even soldiers, and upwards of 75% have working plumbing. Short Answer: depo provera. |
| Posted by: Woozle Chinerong3917 2009-12-23 17:34 |
| #11 We fight wars "over there" to protect families. We are not "over there" to have babies in a kill zone. PERIOD. |
| Posted by: Chunky Phaving7818 2009-12-23 17:22 |
#10 P2K, thanks for the .pdf from the last thread. It did explicitly cover how pregnancy was handled for pregnant Woman Marines; It is believed that pregnancy and motherhood ipso facto interfere with military duties...Granting of maternity leave would result in having ineffectives; replacements could not be procured while the woman remained on the active list; and the mother of a small child would not be readily available for reassignment. Necessary rotation of duty assignments would require the family unit to be broken up for considerable periods of time, or at least until the husband made the necessary provisions to establish the home at the mother's new duty station...It is believed that a woman who is pregnant or a mother should not be a member of the armed forces and should devote herself to the responsibilities which she had assumed, remaining with her husband and child as a family unit. As a male chauvanist pig, I can relate much better to that sort of reasoning. If only we had as much respect for children today. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2009-12-23 15:27 |
| #9 dzzrtrock, you obviously have never heard of certain religious traditions (including mine) that object to a woman getting an abortion even if she was raped. Thankfully we do not live in a barbaric society that REQUIRES abortion (a la the Chinese), and I hope that our armed forces would never ever demand such a thing, regardless of the circumstances. |
| Posted by: Cornsilk Blondie 2009-12-23 15:20 |
| #8 And I suspect Dzzrtrock has never served in the military. Often the most nasty people are hurling judgements from a phucking armchair. |
| Posted by: GirlThursday 2009-12-23 14:55 |
| #7 Agree with Besoeker- not this again. Soldiers will screw. Give the females intrauterine contraception or the shot and save taxpayers 250k in wasted money for soldiers training. Court Martials cost lots too so an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Done. |
| Posted by: GirlThursday 2009-12-23 14:43 |
| #6 Well, when I was a wee lad in the U.S.N., we were told that if the Navy wanted us to have a wife they would issue us one. Same thing for the women service members and sprogs! Throw the book at them and the sperm donor. |
| Posted by: Dopey Jolung5934 2009-12-23 14:34 |
| #5 Getting pregnant is optional, even IF raped. This is simply one of two things: 1.) People lacking good sense & self-control, as their actions have the possibility of harming their mission & unit. These (both parties) should therefore be courts-martialed for dereliction of duty as the military doesn't pay troops to be screwing each other 2.) People who don't want to do their job & intentionally become pregnant & who should be courts-martialed for dereliction of duty In either case, it is a failure of the inDUHvidual to do the right thing in the position and duty they swore an oath to uphold and/or perform.
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| Posted by: dzzrtrock 2009-12-23 13:54 |
| #4 I went a couple of rounds with this yesterday on Open Salon, trying to put across a couple of points - such as, yes, this is somewhat of a problem. There are women who deliberately become pregnant to get out of a TDY, etc - and the fact that they have done so is greatly resented. Of course, some of the nimrods at OS were hyperventilating about birth control, morning after pills, etc not being available (one particular numbskull insisted that this was a policy of the Bush Administration) and that military women were in constant danger of being raped by male servicemen. To hear them tell hyperventilate, one would think they actually gave a damn about military women, and weren't just seizing on another bloody shirt to wave at the DOD. Sigh ... I hate it when people who don't know the first thing about the military, or even any for-real military people, get up on a soap-box... |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2009-12-23 13:38 |
| #3 Pregnancy is voluntary unless you're raped. |
| Posted by: Varmint Glunter7711 2009-12-23 13:16 |
| #2 we sent a couple females home from our last deployment for this. In the cases where the father was i.d.'d both were taken to NJP. We obviously kept the men in country. So, we sent home about 3-4 Marines and other Marines had to pick up their work or we sent a few Marines from CONUS to pick it up. This will always be an issue until we get serious and less PC about so called rights in the military. I don't know of any commander who has or would court martial anyone over a pregnancy. Politically a hot tamale. That being said, I don't disagree w/offering the 5 yr birth control plan to females after bootcamp. Yes, I know condoms are better because of their ability to stop some STDs. |
| Posted by: Broadhead6 2009-12-23 13:11 |
| #1 Special request for.... "not this shi* again' graphic please. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2009-12-23 12:05 |