The U.S. military in Iraq will scrap a policy early next year that has led to the punishment of some soldiers serving in Iraq for becoming pregnant, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq said on Thursday.
General Ray Odierno said the new, Iraq-wide guidelines would take effect beginning January 1, lifting rules enacted by the U.S. commander in northern Iraq, who reports to Odierno, that laid out possible punishments for pregnancy among his soldiers.
The policy had been criticized by some women's advocates and on Tuesday four U.S. senators wrote to the secretary of the U.S. Army asking that it be rescinded.
"That will not be in my orders from January 1," Odierno told Reuters on the sidelines of a seminar in Baghdad, responding to a question about whether possible punishment for soldiers who become pregnant or impregnate other soldiers would be part of new, Iraq-wide guidelines Odierno plans to issue shortly.
According to U.S. policy now, individual commanders can issue rules on behavior for troops under their command that are more strict than those issued by their military superiors.
Now, if the 'rights groups' are concerned that the guys would get lighter punishments than the women who got knocked up, then it makes sense that they would object to the rules. But if they simply think that soldiers getting pregnant is more important than winning the war while deployed in a combat zone then they're just flat wrong. There's nothing wrong with these rules and there's no reason they couldn't be in place. Remember, every time they send someone home because she's pregnant, someone else has to do extra work to cover her mission.
By: Brant
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