Military Abortion Ban: Female Soldiers Not Protected by Constitution They Defend

(source)

My stance on abortion is this. I am pro-choice but I am also anti-abortion. Confused? Basically I believe that a woman has the right to choose however I do believe that the abortion procedure does away with a life.

I have not been faced with the frightening decision of whether to abort or go through with a pregnancy and hopefully I never will.

If anyone wants to see what might happen if Roe v. Wade is overturned the below story is an example.

I just read an article from an unfamiliar website called Religion Dispatches, that tells the story of "Amy" who was stationed at Fallujah as a military journalist in 2007. Amy was a marine and discovered she was pregnant. Amy was fearful of mentioning the pregnancy to her chain of command.

Military hospitals are banned from providing abortion services, except in cases of life endangerment, rape, or incest. If the circumstances are rape or incest the woman must pay for the abortion herself.

“I have long been aware of the stigma surrounding this circumstance and knew my career would likely be over, though I have received exceptional performance reviews in the past,” Amy explains. Although Fallujah has a surgical unit, and abortion is one of the most common surgical procedures, Amy knew that if her pregnancy were discovered, she would be sent back to her home base at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune, where she would then have to seek a private abortion off-base, or she could request leave in Iraq and try her luck at a local hospital. She also knew she could face reprimands from her commanding officers for having had sex in Iraq (part of a broader prohibition on sex in war zones), and that she might not be promoted as a result: a potentially career-ending situation in the Marines, where failure to obtain regular promotions results in being discharged. Moreover, as a woman in the military, accustomed to proving herself to her male peers over her six-year career, Amy was wary of appearing a “weak female.”

“If you get sent home for something like that, everyone will know about it,” says Amy. “That’s a really bad stigma in the military. I thought, that’s not me, I’ve worked harder and I could outrun all the guys. So I chose to stay, and that was just as bad.”

Amy eventually understood the sex she had to be rape however she did not consider the sex to be incredibly violent and figured making a complaint would make her situation worse. She had witnessed other military women given a bad name for "crying rape" and didn't want that to happen to her.

Instead, using herbal abortifacient supplements ordered online, Amy self-aborted. Unable to find a coat hanger she used her sanitized rifle cleaning rod and a laundry pin to manually dislodge the fetus while lying on a towel on the bathroom floor. It was a procedure she attempted twice, each time hemorrhaging profusely. Amy lost so much blood on the first attempt that her skin blanched and her ears rang. She continued working for five weeks, despite increasing sickness, until she realized she was still pregnant.

The morning after her second attempt, she awoke in great pain, and finally told a female supervisor, who told Amy to take an emergency leave to fly back to the United States where a private abortion clinic could finish the procedure. However, Amy was afraid that she would miscarry on the 15-hour plane ride and have no medical escort to help her. She went to the military hospital instead and told the doctor everything. Shortly thereafter, her company first sergeant and other officers were notified of Amy’s condition. The first sergeant came to her hospital room to announce that Amy would be punished under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which addresses violations of general regulations, for having had sex in a war zone.

That night, Amy miscarried alone in her shower. Fearful of the advice of a sympathetic female officer who suggested that Amy might be charged for the abortion as well (she wasn’t), she flushed the fetus down the toilet. “I don’t believe there was ever a life or a soul there,” Amy says, “but I feel undignified for doing that.” When her nonjudicial punishment (a plea sentence for a misdemeanor-like offense) went through, Amy was fined $500 and given a suspended rank reduction.

Amy then requested to be sent home. The military psychiatrist reported that she was "psychologically unstable" and was diagnosed with PTSD, depression and anxiety.

Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, staff attorney for the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, says Amy’s story is the outcome of a military ban on abortion. Kolbi-Molinas says, “If you restrict women to unsafe abortions, this is what will happen.” Military Women “Do Not Receive the Protection of the Constitution they Defend”.

I believe that women have the choices and responsibility to themselves. So, even though I understand that women can choose to disclose to the next in command that they are pregnant and receive the consequences that follow, the alternative of attempting to self-abort may often seem doable to those who are frightened of the outcome.

I would like to think that women would know that nothing good can come from attempting to abort a child alone. I am not in Amy's shoes however I can only imagine that if I were in the same situation I would rather reveal the pregnancy than put my life in danger.

Never the less, I am not Amy and I am not the many others who feel that a self-aborted procedure is an option. It seems that the reason a self-aborted procedures seem viable is that the pressures of patriarchy are too great.

According to Religious Dispatches, before Roe v. Wade the situation was reversed: Military women were pressured into having abortions. The military would discharge any woman who was found pregnant. That policy ended in 1976 with Crawford v. Cushman, a US Appeals Court case ruling that discharging pregnant women violated due process.

I am not sure what the consequences are for military men who have sex however. While he may have his own set of concerns he does not have to deal with the issue of a child inside of him. I am not shaming men for this as this is just a simple case of anatomy. However, long standing patriarchy wants to shame women for their choices.