Military Pregnancy Ban: David Loftus

Although my initial and instinctive response to this situation is umbrage, on second thought I’m not so sure this is necessarily worthy of censure. I should say at the outset that I have never served in the armed forces, though when I was a boy my family was attached to the U.S. Army as civilian dependents and lived on a base in Germany for two years; and my father was a Korean War vet and my brother served in the Navy.

The military is a different culture, with different standards and requirements from those of civilian life – particularly during wartime. Though I am unfamiliar with the governing regulations, I have read that women in the service have been known to get themselves pregnant partly to avoid active duty in a war zone (just as occasionally, men have faked diseases and disorders, or wounded themselves, for the same reason). I do not regard military service as inherently heroic or admirable, by definition, and I have always been utterly opposed to our recent military incursions into Iraq and Afghanistan as wastes of human life, materials, and resources for unclear and probably unattainable goals.

That being said, however, if women wish to regard and prove themselves the equals of men for the purposes of training and advancement via military service, then they have no right to expect to obtain an unequal access to escape from the full performance of their obligations in the course of that service. Many rights and prerogatives that civilians – or even military vets who are no longer in uniform – would automatically enjoy are not available to military service people. Given that it is (or always should be) a free and conscious choice, pregnancy may be one of those prohibited options under certain conditions, such as pending combat duty. (Now, if we only had a way to prevent too-young or obviously unqualified civilians from becoming parents . . . . )