While gays in the military currently have the spotlight, a more urgent issue is the problem with many women in the ranks who are either pregnant or single mothers, both of which deeply impact the ability of America’s military to achieve its mission. The case of Alexis Hutchinson, who refused deployment last year because she had no plan in place for her young son, was just settled:
A single-mom soldier who says she refused to deploy to Afghanistan because she had no family able to care for her young son will be discharged from the military instead of facing a court-martial, the Army said Thursday. Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, an Army cook stationed at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, was arrested in November after skipping her unit's deployment flight. Hutchinson, 21, said she couldn't leave her son because her mother had backed out of plans to keep the child a few days before the soldier's scheduled departure.
So
here we have a difficult situation—our tactical strength depends on a military
force that consists of a large number of pregnant women and single mothers. It has hit the Navy particularly hard.
Navy Times recently reported that pregnancy rates in the Navy spiked by 50% in two years. Ship crews suffer when pregnant sailors are unavailable for deployment or require early evacuation. Instead of re-assessing misguided policies that worsen the problem, the Navy plans to extend them to the submarine service. Never mind that short-handed crews and mid-ocean evacuations due to female medical emergencies would compromise undersea missions and put everyone at greater risk.
There is the logistical problem that they cannot meet their responsibilities, but an added morale problem when the pregnancy is the result of the wide-spread “fraternization” in the ranks. This widespread behavior both flouts regulations and weakens unit cohesion, and yet the feminist response has been two-fold: to have ready-access to the controversial “morning after” pill and abortion (both on the tax-payers’ dime) and when necessary to place charges of sexual assault against the father of the child to protect the mother’s career. This plays havoc with troop cohesion and can easily spiral into emotional circuses.
We
should all be concerned about how feminists are playing games with the armed
forces -- especially since we all know families with loved ones already serving
in dangerous settings. One must dig to know that many gender feminists have
clearly tipped their hands and posited that war itself is a natural extension of
patriarchy. These women (and men) believe that gender mainstreaming is a good way to
“de-militarize” the military, and to that end, pregnant soldiers and
disobedient young mothers are the poster children for a castrated force. The
problem is that many fine young men and women will pay the ultimate price for a
social experiment gone mad.
Comments
“People have realized that the complete removal of the feminine element from the Christian message is a shortcoming from an anthropological viewpoint. It is theologically and anthropologically important for woman to be at the center of Christianity."
This is just another of the unintended consequences of the cultural acceptance of contraception and abortion! Men's sexuality has been robbed of its creative essence. It is now viewed as something that imposes a burden on women (when conception happens to occur), something used to control women or something that is purely recreational. Why would men bother?? In taking away their responsibility, we've also robbed them of their significance! In the big picture of humanity, men have been made into nothing more than a nuisance women have to figure out how to control in order to bring about the next generation. Men don't see it as their task to protect the vulnerable because they see themselves as the vulnerable ones. A few well preserved vials of sperm would make men entirely obsolete in the world's ethos today!!
That is astounding Robin, and good for you for standing up. At the heart of that matter, I think, is even worse than a gender mixing message. There is an increased sharper and sharper focus on the "self." Solid Catholic teaching returns our focus away from ourselves to Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The original sin, Eve denied her womanhood when she desired to be like "gods." Since the only god she knew was the Father. Where was Adam? He stood impotent... in other words, they were divorced. There's a young girl at Robin's son's high school who was just told that she is the center of the universe and it's a tragic disservice to her.
Ditto what Mary said! A lot of high schools have very poor math and science depts, for boys and girls. I also am educated as a chemical engineer, but chose to teach the two years before we had children because its hours were more suited to spending time with children. (I was looking ahead). When it came time and I was pregnant with our first, I realized that I did not want to leave him with someone else, and was able to stay home full time. I am not sure it would have been that easy if we were used to another engineering income and not just a private school teacher income. Also some of my first job offers were out on oil rigs - I had no interest in that at all even though I enjoyed my engineering classes and did well in them. No one discouraged me from an engineering job, on the contrary I got a lot of flack for my decision not to pursue an engineering career.
I've been lurking, but this is one that irritates me. Beats the heck out of me what these "barriers" are. I was educated as a chemical engineer, where 1/3 of our class was women. However, in electrical engineering, only 1 or 2 out of 30 were women. Is it possible that women are Just Not Interested in some areas? Nah, it must be The Man keeping us down so we must legislate (and, I agree -- when they say "legistlate", I hear "quota"). And actually, I have a friend that was also a chemical engineer. When she lost her job, she decided not to go back into engineering and started working from home so she could spend more time with her 3 kids. Also, if nothing else, there are all kinds of incentives for women to enter science and engineering -- scholarships not available to men, guaranteed housing on campuses that do not guarantee housing to the general population, etc. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that schools in general are not preparing students for the hard sciences. It is truly a sad state of affairs, the lack of science education these days.