Despite the US Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that it is a violation of a woman's constitutional right to privacy for any US public authority to ban abortion, the US government bans the performance of abortions at all US military medical facilities "except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the foetus were carried to term or in a case in which the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest". Even in such cases, military health insurance doesn't cover the procedure, which costs US$325-650.
The ban threatens the health and safety of at least 100,000 US servicewomen and military dependents.
The number of abortions performed at US military facilities has dropped dramatically since the ban was imposed. In 1977, before abortions at US military health facilities were restricted, about 26,000 abortions were performed in military hospitals or covered by military insurance, according to a 2002 report by the Congressional Research Service. Only four such procedures were performed last year.
The ban's impact is particularly devastating for those soldiers, and the partners of soldiers, stationed in countries where abortion is illegal, such as Iraq and Afghanistan. The "option" of travelling to a third country for a pregnancy termination requires US servicewomen to take leave, and leave time must first be cleared with their superiors, who may delay and even reject requests for leave, thus denying the servicewoman's ability to have an abortion.
In a June 2002 letter sent to US senators, retired Lieutenant-General Claudia Kennedy, the US Army's only female three-star general, stated that by requiring women to explain their need for time off and forcing them to travel from remote locations to obtain abortions, the Pentagon is, in effect, "enforcing" pregnancies on servicewomen.
According to an August 19 article on the HeraldNet website, Beth Eby, a US Army warrant officer who was stationed in Baghdad from January through July, e-mailed her parents in Virginia in May that some pregnant soldiers in her unit opted to perform abortions on themselves rather than face disciplinary measures. The article reported that the servicewomen had been warned of "harsh punishment" for becoming pregnant in violation of a no-sex rule and the army had even stopped handing out condoms to Eby's unit.
The Pentagon brass says that with restrictions on sexual relations in combat zones and with birth control available, servicewomen should simply not be getting pregnant. But it's clear that birth control and no-sex rules aren't working. In Iraq and Kuwait alone, 163 US Army women were pregnant as of June this year.
The abstinence decree also ignores the fact that sexual assault is widespread in the US military. According to a 2003 study by the University of Iowa and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, 30% of female veterans reported being victims of rape or attempted rape during their military service.
Allegations of sexual assault in the US Army have climbed steadily over the past five years. A US defence department study
found that there were 901 reported sexual assaults of service members in 2002 and 1012 in 2003.
Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, an non-government public-policy organisation that specialises in military-personnel issues, claims making the abortion services available at US military health facilities would be "disheartening and demoralising".
Donnelly, a right-wing political activist who served two Republican presidents on panels that examined the role of women in the military, claimed that if military doctors performed abortions they would have inadequate time to provide other medical services. "I think the demand would escalate quite quickly and it really would have a serious effect on the availability of medical care", Donnelly told Women's e-News website columnist Jodie Enda.
It's beyond hypocritical that the US military does not cover the cost of abortion even in the case of rape or incest, but offers free breast implants, nose jobs and liposuction. The official explanation for covering these frivolous cosmetic surgeries is to allow military surgeons to stay in good practice for reconstructive surgery of battle wounds. Exactly how liposuction and breast implants figure into that equation is not clear.
The British military, which also offers free breast-enlargement surgery to servicewomen, claims the implants are seen as preventative surgery to benefit "women who might leave because of suffering from psychological depression over the size of their breasts".
It seems clear that the large influx of women into the US military has not and will not fundamentally change its character. Enlisting in the military may mean equality on paper, but it does not mean liberation — from restrictive gender roles, from sexual harassment and abuse, or from any of the other manifestations that women are subjected to in a sexist society.
Nicole Hilder
From Green Left Weekly, December 1, 2004.
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