Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: MillCreek on September 07, 2018, 10:20:01 AM
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https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/militarymedicine/74959?xid=nl_mpt_morningbreak2018-09-07&eun=g149952d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningBreak_090718&utm_term=Morning%20Break%20-%20Active%20Users%20-%20180%20days
Female service members have a relatively high rate of unintended pregnancy. Access to care and contraception is a problem.
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Bullshit.
Access to care and contraceptives, for both males and females, is outstandingly easy deployed. Not only are there Troop medical clinics in most FOB's that will hand out condoms and an entire aisle in AAFES devoted to it, every female soldier deploying is offered long lasting contraceptives prior to deployment. If they are Reservists or NG they get Tri-Care coverage early enough they could get it for free prior to showing up at mob station.
The problem is thinking that a deployment pregnancy is unintended.
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Access to condoms is a problem where in the first world?
How hard is it to by a box at the grocery store, local pharmacy and throw it in with your gear before deployment?
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Want to end the problem?
If you get pregnant before or while deployed you get dishonorably discharged.
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Bullshit.
Access to care and contraceptives, for both males and females, is outstandingly easy deployed. Not only are there Troop medical clinics in most FOB's that will hand out condoms and an entire aisle in AAFES devoted to it, every female soldier deploying is offered long lasting contraceptives prior to deployment. If they are Reservists or NG they get Tri-Care coverage early enough they could get it for free prior to showing up at mob station.
The problem is thinking that a deployment pregnancy is unintended.
What he said.
I was on active duty (Navy) when women were first being assigned to ships and deploying squadrons. When a pregnancy would result in not going on deployment or going home early it was a option many female sailors used. In 1991 the USS Acadia returned from deployment missing 36 female sailors, they had been removed from the ship due to pregnancy. I would expect the same mindset exits in today's Armed Forces, if you don't like your assignment and have an easy out just keep spreading your legs until you hit the baby jackpot and get sent home.
bob
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The problem is thinking that a deployment pregnancy is unintended.
That plus
If you get pregnant before or while deployed you get dishonorably discharged without benefits.
Might work.
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What he said.
I was on active duty (Navy) when women were first being assigned to ships and deploying squadrons. When a pregnancy would result in not going on deployment or going home early it was a option many female sailors used. In 1991 the USS Acadia returned from deployment missing 36 female sailors, they had been removed from the ship due to pregnancy. I would expect the same mindset exits in today's Armed Forces, if you don't like your assignment and have an easy out just keep spreading your legs until you hit the baby jackpot and get sent home.
bob
At the risk of thread drift and a possible volatile subject, I almost see that as similar to "abortion as convenient birth control". Using a child, whether aborting it or having it, to simply make some part of your life conveniently easier, is deplorable, IMO.
I wonder how some of these "get out of deployment free" kids turn out, raised by parents that had them simply to get out of an obligation they voluntarily signed up for?
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At the risk of thread drift and a possible volatile subject, I almost see that as similar to "abortion as convenient birth control". Using a child, whether aborting it or having it, to simply make some part of your life conveniently easier, is deplorable, IMO.
I wonder how some of these "get out of deployment free" kids turn out, raised by parents that had them simply to get out of an obligation they voluntarily signed up for?
You're assuming no abortion post ticket home.
Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk
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It generally took a few months to process them out, since most states limit by t he tieabortion to the first trimester, the abortion option is generally closed by the time they get home.
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It generally took a few months to process them out, since most states limit by t he tieabortion to the first trimester, the abortion option is generally closed by the time they get home.
Plus neither the military or VA provide or pay for abortion services. I think that is probably not really a bar for someone on active duty, who can presumably afford to pay for one.
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Yep, no costs whatsoever to incorporating women into the Armed Forces.
Let's keep pushing the social engineering, since it's already working so well.
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The absolute worst thing about women getting pregnant on deployment or into 3rd trimester so they could stay home was they were not replaced. Their billet stayed unfilled, causing more work for the ones left behind and when you are already talking being undermanned it just increases the stress on the sailors still onboard trying to do their job and the missing sailor's job. I was and am not a fan of having women in deploying billets just because of that. Of course at this point in time I am probably considered 'old Navy". I have been retired longer than I did active duty now so things could possibly be different.
bob
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Might work.
Yea, I’m well outside my domain of knowledge so I probably should have just left it at discharged. I’m not sure what all the ramifications are of the various ways of being disconnected.
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https://popularmilitary.com/instructors-claim-first-female-enlisted-earn-ranger-tab-actually-quit-given-special-treatment/?utm_source=11%20Bravos
How timely that this came it today, too:
Earlier this year, a female candidate was dropped after it was discovered that she was pregnant with the child of one of her fellow Ranger School students.
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Rangers lead the way!
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Yea, I’m well outside my domain of knowledge so I probably should have just left it at discharged. I’m not sure what all the ramifications are of the various ways of being disconnected.
They vary: https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/labor-employment-law/discharges-and-their-effect-on-veteran-benefits.html
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Rangers lead the way!
In going all the way?
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Get all women out of every combat position. Move them to support positions only.
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Get all women out of every combat position. Move them to support positions only.
This wouldn't change a thing in the OP. Soldiers bang each other in support positions too.
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Get all women out of every combat position. Move them to support positions only.
Uh, phrasing?
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Want to end the problem?
If you get pregnant before or while deployed you get dishonorably discharged.
And watch the rape accusations fly.
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Want to end the problem?
If you get pregnant before or while deployed you get dishonorably discharged.
Yeah, just nope. This is a dumb idea.
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I love how you guys think the only way to solve this is to kick woman out of deployment.
Mandatory IUDs for deployment would solve the issue, regardless of the intentions of the woman.
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Mandatory IUDs for deployment would solve the issue, regardless of the intentions of the woman.
THAT would be an amazing PR move. Mandatory medical procedure with a risk of sterility.
No, the answer is to do exactly what we do currently. Train and deploy the soldiers we have. There are some medical conditions that make you non deployable (for men and women). You test for those pre deployment, and if a soldier gets a non-deployable condition while deployed you re-deploy them. It's not that big a deal, except to social engineering grad students and feminists with an article to write.
Yes it sucks when a soldier gets pregnant and redeploys early, because you have to cover down on their job. As you do when a soldier gets sleep apnea, hurts their knee, get's diagnosed with high blood pressure, or any of the literally two pages* of conditions that makes some one non-deployable.
We do have some issues integrating females, and some of them are self inflicted, but a rash of pregnancies isn't one of them, even malingering pregnancies.
*And the two pages is just for CENTCOM. Every AOR has their own list of things they won't allow.
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Want to end the problem?
If you get pregnant before or while deployed you get dishonorably discharged.
DD can only be awarded by a General Court Martial. DD's are usually awarded for things like desertion or murder and you lose your rights just like any other felon. Is that the route we want to take for doing what people do?
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I'm sure this isn't a new problem. Nurses were likely getting themselves knocked up since WW1 and before just to get sent home.
So the various branches of every military that's ever had women deployed away from home have been dealing with this for at least a century now and many, many ideas have certainly been promulgated as to how to deal with it and they've not come up with anything. Study after study, report after report and...nothing.
This is one of those *shrug* "Watchu gonna do?" type of things.
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DD can only be awarded by a General Court Martial. DD's are usually awarded for things like desertion or murder and you lose your rights just like any other felon. Is that the route we want to take for doing what people do?
Reread the thread. I already acknowledged I really didn’t understand the nuances of different separations.
Getting prego isn’t like blowing out a knee.
If you don’t want to get prego there is a sure fire way to make sure it doesn’t happen.
The “father” should probably be separated from th service also.
Humans understand risk and rewards intuitively.
It wouldn’t solve the problem but it would diminish it for sure.
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There's not a problem to solve, as I believe I said.
And since the VAST majority of knee injuries deployed happen playing sports in a soldier's off time, it's more similar to pregnancy than you think at least as far as deployments go.
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Reread the thread. I already acknowledged I really didn’t understand the nuances of different separations.
Getting prego isn’t like blowing out a knee.
If you don’t want to get prego there is a sure fire way to make sure it doesn’t happen.
The “father” should probably be separated from th service also.
Humans understand risk and rewards intuitively.
It wouldn’t solve the problem but it would diminish it for sure.
It wouldn't solve the problem and it would create some new ones along the way. And i'll vouch for dogmush's statement, as a unit commander I lost way more males to sports injuries than I did to females getting pregnant.
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It wouldn't solve the problem and it would create some new ones along the way. And i'll vouch for dogmush's statement, as a unit commander I lost way more males to sports injuries than I did to females getting pregnant.
Out of curiosity, does that hold true as a percentage?
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Out of curiosity, does that hold true as a percentage?
Yes. At least in my units over the GWOT. It even holds true if you include pregnancies discovered up to 90 days before a deployment.
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Out of curiosity, does that hold true as a percentage?
I had command of three stations, three women pregnant over a 9 year period. At one station I banned sports like flag football because too many men were getting hurt and on limited duty. For my money alcohol is way worse of a problem than pregnancy. Maybe we should ban drinking instead? :-X
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Maybe we should ban drinking instead? :-X
Would that be a bad idea?
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Would that be a bad idea?
It's a joke. Drinking while deployed is banned. At least for the Army.
Would you like to guess how effective it is?
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Would that be a bad idea?
I think it is about as unenforceable as banning sex.
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After 22 years I don't think it is a huge problem. One fix for the sea service, I would suspend a pregnant member's sea counter and if necessary extend the enlistment so that they complete their sea tour. The career women planned their sea service and pregnancy correctly, mostly a junior sailor problem. And I still like the service academy approach. No marriage first term.
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It wouldn't solve the problem and it would create some new ones along the way. And i'll vouch for dogmush's statement, as a unit commander I lost way more males to sports injuries than I did to females getting pregnant.
More males to injuries vs pregnancies in actual numbers or as a percentage of their overall representation?
In other words what % of the males miss deployment due to sports ball injury vs the % of women who become pregnant.
Not being snarky, I don’t know and never looked it up.
My frame of reference is only online discussions, editorials and occasional face to face veteran anecdote.
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More males to injuries vs pregnancies in actual numbers or as a percentage of their overall representation?
In other words what % of the males miss deployment due to sports ball injury vs the % of women who become pregnant.
Not being snarky, I don’t know and never looked it up.
My frame of reference is only online discussions, editorials and occasional face to face veteran anecdote.
It's a different situation for me, I'm in the Coast Guard. When I banned flag football injuries were a weekly thing, mostly sprained/torn ligaments, black eyes and a ginormous egg on one person skull. He dove headfirst into a stone BBQ pit. The pit had been there 30 plus years. I don't have any figures for you but the % of males missing duty was no doubt higher than women and pregnancy. Pregnancy was never an issue at the 3 stations I had.
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More males to injuries vs pregnancies in actual numbers or as a percentage of their overall representation?
In other words what % of the males miss deployment due to sports ball injury vs the % of women who become pregnant.
Not being snarky, I don’t know and never looked it up.
My frame of reference is only online discussions, editorials and occasional face to face veteran anecdote.
As I said in post 30, speaking of deployments and missed deployments/being sent home early, over the course of the War on Terror, and in a Combat Service Support MOS that had women from the beginning, we have not deployed, or sent home a higher percentage of male soldiers for injuries related to off duty sports than female due to pregnancy. THis is a non issue, except the authors of that story are trying to make an issue they can then solve. I'd have to check with some old 1SG's to be sure, but I'm pretty sure the percentage of missed deployments due to motorcycle crashes is higher as well. I can think of 7 of those off the top of my head.
Also, I'll mention it again, US service members access to contraceptives is easy, free, and generally without recrimination. I don't know what the "preferred method" of birth control those soldiers in the article couldn't get But I know for a fact (because I've helped my solders navigate TriCare to get) several types of IUD, a couple of implantable, depo, pills, diaphragms, sponges, (in some cases) tubal ligation, condoms of every shape, size and color and probably some ones I don't know about are all available and free to service members. There are some that aren't available to start while deployed. You have to think a little ahead but you can get contraceptives.
Hell, I had a MALE soldier get birth control pills just for the asking from the Navy in Bahrain. He said one of his Female shipmates needed some to get back to port, and rattled off a brand name and they gave him a pack.
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I think I ranted about this once before....oh yeah...here it is. (With apologies to BSL)
http://www.armedpolitesociety.com/index.php?topic=49614.msg1012238#msg1012238
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I love how you guys think the only way to solve this is to kick woman out of deployment.
It would also solve the problem of female soldiers being much, much weaker, and much more prone to injuries than male soldiers. So it's a win all around. No pregnancies, less injuries and better performance in their duties.
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It would also solve the problem of female soldiers being much, much weaker, and much more prone to injuries than male soldiers. So it's a win all around. No pregnancies, less injuries and better performance in their duties.
So how many deployments have you been on in the last 15 years?
I'm interested in your first hand knowledge of deployed females, since it doesn't really correlate with mine.
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So how many deployments have you been on in the last 15 years?
I'm interested in your first hand knowledge of deployed females, since it doesn't really correlate with mine.
I have never been in the military.
The military has done research on mixed sex units. The UMC found that all male units performed better than mixed sex ones:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2394531-marine-corps-force-integration-plan-summary.html
The military found that women suffer far more injuries than men (there are a bunch of studies, I just picked one randomly):
https://watermark.silverchair.com/milmed-d-14-00321.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAk8wggJLBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggI8MIICOAIBADCCAjEGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQMGpB3J3nPKKDmwpMiAgEQgIICAtqdMY2N_Fm8h4Uspl3ZqN0N8t5YTQbKO-rcO7n5uJbpbUg96zrv87xOvsGlvShrr-pz62rgMFGcRgTwsGICfeGDugkkJDU1q3Ok0Q5srGQ3yg51NLvgd0WBXGSm5qBtI6h-MmrVgVlzu6wDepDslMH9oubkE2N8EFy-N1qh0XxE_Qia2KCpEcfQcuboP96XZ9jS8lg4qMizWi5kcZJnS3zWkLVWcExVlY20v4ibtt3rlYEPJgJ1YDzAMhbNXvl7o3axSjEhIyvhIHmpcYKc5ojpdMC2nkxeR1AtQMxE3xMXugTtUOq2ZmTIAk515u9q1bxVfoYaBsmeW8wUlsR_K6G-2MwZU7QHaU0LgHrWeJBxWacNIdnyn6jYjULTiDe2w1oKI4WTyeaLe2wqbk-Q2jvjZmS6Lm1aQXjQsiF8aMBMqwwtf4HN7vFBCkpFet351XPiHeJEXBvJlhtz7ui-oavTdkt7-72NpGNtzJN3VIWnufUt-VCzPiGoRyS3uRfAIhbsAkuQW3Z1PWej9A2_S636HCxNg5sWvAi6gnzYo5hIresrAjM8DmKiZDMSl_BJauNTOSKyBEY0gR4yewFSDduZRopcK7jkMDmCibawl8B-WWP-emtxYkZDbMW1IelvQKABgvoMM22sgDv4AWwRKqhLfJ5TAi1zka-EBVdhLOlh8OU
I could sight studies showing men are stronger than women, but I don't think that is necessary.
Women are, on average, weaker than men, and more prone to injury. And pregnancy. This makes women worse combat soldiers than men. Feminism doesn't override physical differences in the sexes.
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Not all Soldiers are combat soldiers, and not all deployments are combat deployments.
ETA: To expound, not even all deployments to combat zones are combat deployments. This thread and OP weren't about Females in Combat Arms Military Occupational Specialties (MOS) which is what the Marine Corps was studying, it was about women being deployed.
Several folks have told you that the OP's "problem" is neither that new, nor much of a problem. Two of us have told you from personal experience commanding mixed units that it's not that much of a problem, but you seem to be pretty entrenched in your views.
Let me be plain because I'm going to edge right up to the Polite part here. Females have deployed with soldiers forever. They have done so in uniform as US Soldiers themselves for decades. There are many roles in Combat Support and Combat Service Support that require deployments for which women do as well as (or in some cases better than) their male counterparts.
BTR, you should probably stop talking about this subject, until you at least get the differences between deployments, combat, and MOS's correct, because you're wrong. Removing females from all deployments would be a net hindrance to the US military, and hurt our combat effectiveness, even if it were possible politically, which it's not.
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There are many roles in Combat Support and Combat Service Support that require deployments for which women do as well as (or in some cases better than) their male counterparts.
The best Aircraft Commander I ever flew with was a female Annapolis grad who flew helos in Desert Storm/Shield. Simply the best pilot I have ever seen.
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There are Coast Guard air crews(mixed sex) pre staging right now for the aftermath of Florence. My unit is about ready to pull chocks and move inland but our boat crews (mixed gender) and maintainers are ready to head back to the coast for SAR ops as soon as they can. I seriously doubt that anyone assisted by a female Coastie is going to complain.
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The best Aircraft Commander I ever flew with was a female Annapolis grad who flew helos in Desert Storm/Shield. Simply the best pilot I have ever seen.
Seem to recall that when Rev was with Sikorski, the best test pilot they had was a female
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There are Coast Guard air crews(mixed sex) pre staging right now for the aftermath of Florence.
I worked in your C-130s out of SACTO a few times. The female (I can't remember if she was AC or co-pilot) on a couple of those missions was AJ Squared Away too. I'm not sure if she could have fireman carried my fat ass off the aircraft in an emergency, but she could fly it any old time. :)
Do you guys have any female helo pilots these days? I flew in the 65s quite a few times, but they were always male aircrew.
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Yup, we have female pilots and female Surfmen, just graduated our first woman through something called ATOC.