Courts-Martial for Pregnancy: Good Intention, Bad Implemetation

I couldn't open my inbox or my Google reader this week without seeing this story about the Major General Cucolo, who commands the Multi-National Division-North. The Maj. Gen. apparently decided that getting knocked up would be the worst thing you could do to in his division, worthy of a court martial. Of course, with birth control difficult to obtain in some military treatment facilities, and abortions nigh inaccessible, this policy had all the makings of a convoy wreck.

So I was ecstatic to read in the paper copy of Stars and Stripes this week that four Democratic Senators, led by Barbara Boxer, challenged the policy, saying it "defies comprehension." They argued that the order might encourage women to make decisions that would endanger their health to protect their careers. I think we have seen that this is a reasonable argument. Much to my relief, General Raymond Odierno rescinded this policy altogether. In order to stop anything like this from happening in the future, he also made General Orders an overarching act, rather than leaving them up to the judgment of each individual Commander.

Even though the order has now been rescinded, the serious problems associated with it still call for reflection. While Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo claimed that he would review each case individually, I don't trust the military to provide an environment that would guarantee this. The Maj. Gen. claimed that he would be lenient, that he didn't want to send service men and women to jail, but some military law experts said that the policy was worded in a way that allows other commanders to interpret it literally. If he wanted to just put letters of punishment in their service records, that is the policy he should have written. In my experience, the military is a very literal organization. Have you read Catch-22? It contains more truth than most people realize.

Major General Cucolo also claimed that the policy would be applied fairly to both men and women, and according to Stars and Stripes, the seven individuals already punished under the policy were supposed to be indicative of this. In reality, the "fairness" of the policy depended on women naming the men who participated in the fun part (after all, a woman doesn't climb on top of herself and get pregnant). Since the military hasn't exactly proven itself a safe place to a woman who "narcs" on one of her male comrades, the Maj. Gen. might as well have called for a giant "A" to be plastered on the front of her Kevlar. If she did stay silent, he wasn't going to spend time chasing the men down. Maj. Gen. Cucolo's own words: "I'm in a war zone ... I don’t have time for that.”

That this policy was even considered raises many points about women in the military that I could go on about for countless posts, including the fact that the Maj. Gen. doesn't know the difference between abortion and Plan B, isn't willing to provide access to ways to help women stay not pregnant, or that Words Mean Things, especially when writing General Orders that other people might have to interpret. This was a bad policy that had a good point at the heart of it. The loss of troops from vital places is an important point to ponder -- but a policy that targets women, whether intended to do so or not, isn't the way to get the mission accomplished.

Photo: 17th Fires Brigade's photostream on Flickr.