Will the military become the pro-choice movement’s preferred battleground to embed government-funded abortion in American public policy? And will the result be more harm to women and the country they are fighting to defend?
From Townhall Magazine's June feature, "Harming Women: Abortions and the Military," by Kathy Jessup:
Bethany Saros was a relatively unknown writer until November 2011 when a story by the Minnesota mother and Army veteran became a headline on Salon’s liberal, national website.
Saros wrote about becoming pregnant during a brief, battlefield love affair during her Army deployment in Iraq. She said her choice to become a single mother flew in the face of what she claimed is the U.S. military’s “unspoken code that a good soldier will have an abortion, continue the mission, and get some sympathy because she chose duty over motherhood.”
Saros’ narrative was a surprisingly pro-life piece for a decidedly pro-choice publication that several weeks later would feature a story subhead declaring lateterm abortions needed to remain legal in the U.S.
A coincidence? Perhaps, but consider Senate Democrats were busy introducing an amendment to a defense appropriations bill that California Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer said would provide the “full range of reproductive-health care” options to military women who became pregnant as the result of a rape.
It was Democrats’ third attempt in two years to make a dent in the Hyde Amendment, the original ban on government health care coverage for abortion. ....
STRIKING A BALANCE
America’s servicewomen got their first military-issue maternity uniforms in 1980. But questions about pregnancy and America’s servicewoman remain unresolved.
The viability of the unborn remains the tantamount concern. But to what degree should the military be allowed to control the sexual activities of its members?
Neither abortion, where an unborn child pays the price for sexual activity, nor military discharge, which can undercut unit readiness, solve the pregnancy dilemma.
Either way, liberals want the American taxpayer to pick up the tab for decisions of passion via abortion costs or in lost productivity and assigning replacements when a pregnant servicewoman must be unexpectedly furloughed.
One person posting comments on one military website suggests Maj. Gen. Cucolo was justified in ordering “no sex in a war zone.”
“He saw a problem and tried to solve it,” the person wrote. “He should have known better.”
Read more of Kathy Jessup's piece in the June isssue of Townhall Magazine.
