Note: I wrote this opinion piece last week but was unable to load on the web site due to problems with my travel computer.
Reflections of a retired Baby Boomer
Topic: Pregnant Soldiers
When I woke up the day after Christmas and checked the morning news, I was very happy to hear, General Ray Odierno, the General in charge of all the forces in Iraq intended to rescind a policy that could have resulted in court martial of both the soldiers who became pregnant and the men responsible for the pregnancy. The policy had been put in place by one of his subordinates, Major General Anthony Cucolo the commander of U.S. forces in Northern Iraq. General Cucolo’s force numbers 22,000 soldiers of which 1,682 were women. Of that total apparently 4 became pregnant. In spite of the reversal of policy, I believe this incident highlights women in the military still have hurdles to overcome.
As a Gulf War veteran, I can certainly understand where Major General Cucolo was coming from. The pregnancy thing was one of a number of items he addressed to emphasize the seriousness of being involved in a war, maintain good order and discipline, and not leave units short handed. My concern was the pregnancy policy was not well thought out, sent the wrong signal and could have left some women and men open to organizational harrassment by superiors or co-workers who didn’t like them for whatever reason and could use the policy to ruin their career.
To clarify, I have an older brother who is retired Army. He told me during the first Gulf War one of the soldiers working for him deliberately dropped a bowling ball on his foot just before they were scheduled to deploy to avoid having to go to the war zone. The question I would ask, because of that incident, are you going to automatically discipline every soldier serving in the war zone who suffers an injury not related to combat? When I was serving in the military it was pretty common for men who worked for me to get injured playing sports during their down time and have to miss time at work. I would submit that not every non combat related injury is deliberate and neither is every pregnancy. No form of birth control provides 100% protection. Many women in the military are married to military members. I could easily foresee a situation under Major General Cucolo’s policy where a husband and wife where disciplined because the wife became pregnant.
During the first Gulf War, I was assigned to one of the Navy’s largest operational aviation squadrons. It was also one of the first Navy units to have a large number of women assigned as flight crew members. I happened to be the senior female assigned and was often consulted by the Commanding Officer on women specific issues. There were a couple of incidents that might help clarify where I’m going with this. Early in my assignment, one of the women pilots became pregnant. The men in the squadron didn’t seem to have a problem with it but the other women flight crew members did. They felt she was unprofessional and was setting a negative role model for women in the military. They felt she should have waited until her next assignment to get pregnant. Navy assignments rotate between sea duty and shore assignments. Sea duty involves being assigned to units that could go into combat and shore duty assignments are usually units that are more administrative and unlikely to go into combat should a conflict occur. Many navy personnel who want to enlarge their families will typically plan to have children during the shore assignments. My married friends told me the reason for this was because if possible they wanted both parents to be around for both the pregnancy and birth.
I chose not to confront the young woman about the timing of her pregnancy but one day she invited me to lunch. Sensing she probably needed someone to talk to I accepted. I’m glad I did. She explained that she had gone to visit her husband who was stationed in a different geographic region. They had practiced birth control but it failed and she found herself pregnant. She didn’t believe in abortion so chose to keep her child. She was sorry the other women were mad at her but felt she had made the right choice. I agreed with her. A number of years before that, the same thing happened to a good friend and her boss made her professional life a living Hell. He seemed to feel that she deliberately got pregnant just to avoid work. Nowadays they call it a hostile work environment. He was never taken to task for his treatment of her and nearly ruined her career.
There is one more incident worth mentioning. Just before my unit deployed to the war zone, I presided over a meeting with the women in my unit. They asked me to look into one problem for them. A number of fellow female sailors stationed at other units on the base found themselves pregnant even though they were on birth control pills. The pills were supposedly something like 98% or more effective in preventing pregnancy. The woman thought the number of women getting pregnant was too high. They also said the military doctors were handing out expired birth control pills and they believed that was the problem. I checked with base medical personnel. They confirmed they were handing out expired pills but said they should still work okay. I didn’t investigate further and reported my findings to the women. They still thought the expired pills were the problem but let it go. A year or two after the war ended I saw an article in a military paper stating a military study concluded that the higher than normal numbers of military women having unplanned pregnancies during the war was the result of being given expired birth control pills.
In my 28 years in the military, there were numerous studies looking at the impact of having women in the military. Every study result I saw said units lost more time from men getting sick or being thrown in the brig because of bad behaviour than from women who became pregnant. During the first Gulf War, I had a number of single moms working for me. Our hours were long and often involved rotating shifts. They also frequently were required to leave our home location in Spain and deploy to the war zone. There was not one instance where the women were unable to deploy, lost time at work or asked for a day off to take care of sick children. I asked the women how were they able to handle the responsibilities of parenting along with the demands of a tough job that even when home in Spain, frequently required them to work through the night. The Department of Defense is the world’s largest day care provider but typically they shut down in the evening and even during the day if a child is sick a parent had to come get them. They replied; “Ma’am, we women stick together. We find women who are off when we’re working and if needed, they baby sit our kids and when they’re working we take care of theirs. When we leave home and go to the war front, same thing.”
Years ago there was a commercial with the line: “You’ve come a long way Baby”. Indeed women in the military have come a long way. When I joined in the early ’70’s, women could not have children, not even step children. It took a Supreme Court Decision to change that policy. I’m very glad it did not take a Supreme Court decision to reverse this most recent pregnancy policy. 231,000 women have deployed to the war zone since 2001, reports from the field indicate they have carried themselves with honor and distinction. Have there been any who have not lived up to standards and failed in their duty? I’m sure there have been just as there have probably been a small number of men who have not. Let’s not let those small numbers color perceptions of the great job the overwhelming majority of our men and women are doing.
