“You hear these legends of coat-hanger abortions,” a 26-year-old former Marine sergeant told me recently, “but there are no coat hangers in Iraq. I looked.” Amy (who prefers not to use her real name) was stationed in Fallujah as a military journalist two years ago when she discovered she was pregnant. As a female Marine, a distinct minority in the branch, Amy was fearful of going to her chain of command to explain her situation.
For military women, who lack all rights to medical privacy, facing an unplanned pregnancy is a daunting obstacle. Thanks to anti-abortion forces in Congress, military hospitals are banned from providing abortion services, except in cases of life endangerment, rape, or incest (and for the latter two, only if the patient pays for the service herself). Amy says her options were “like being given a choice between swimming in a pond full of crocodiles or piranhas.”
“I have long been aware of the stigma surrounding this circumstance and knew my career would likely be over, though I have received exceptional performance reviews in the past,” Amy explains. Although Fallujah has a surgical unit, and abortion is one of the most common surgical procedures, Amy knew that if her pregnancy were discovered, she would be sent back to her home base at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune, where she would then have to seek a private abortion off-base, or she could request leave in Iraq and try her luck at a local hospital. She also knew she could face reprimands from her commanding officers for having had sex in Iraq (part of a broader prohibition on sex in war zones), and that she might not be promoted as a result: a potentially career-ending situation in the Marines, where failure to obtain regular promotions results in being discharged. Moreover, as a woman in the military, accustomed to proving herself to her male peers over her six-year career, Amy was wary of appearing a “weak female.”
“If you get sent home for something like that, everyone will know about it,” says Amy. “That’s a really bad stigma in the military. I thought, that’s not me, I’ve worked harder and I could outrun all the guys. So I chose to stay, and that was just as bad.”
From a remove of two years, Amy now sees the sex that resulted in her pregnancy as rape: something that may have qualified her for an on-base (though self-funded) abortion. However, at the time, because the rape wasn’t brutally violent, and because she had seen fellow servicewomen be ostracized for “crying rape” in the past, she imagined nothing but trouble would come of making a complaint.
Instead, using herbal abortifacient supplements ordered online, Amy self-aborted. Unable to find a coat hanger she used her sanitized rifle cleaning rod and a laundry pin to manually dislodge the fetus while lying on a towel on the bathroom floor. It was a procedure she attempted twice, each time hemorrhaging profusely. Amy lost so much blood on the first attempt that her skin blanched and her ears rang. She continued working for five weeks, despite increasing sickness, until she realized she was still pregnant.
The morning after her second attempt, she awoke in great pain, and finally told a female supervisor, who told Amy to take an emergency leave to fly back to the United States where a private abortion clinic could finish the procedure. However, Amy was afraid that she would miscarry on the 15-hour plane ride and have no medical escort to help her. She went to the military hospital instead and told the doctor everything. Shortly thereafter, her company first sergeant and other officers were notified of Amy’s condition. The first sergeant came to her hospital room to announce that Amy would be punished under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which addresses violations of general regulations, for having had sex in a war zone.
That night, Amy miscarried alone in her shower. Fearful of the advice of a sympathetic female officer who suggested that Amy might be charged for the abortion as well (she wasn’t), she flushed the fetus down the toilet. “I don’t believe there was ever a life or a soul there,” Amy says, “but I feel undignified for doing that.” When her nonjudicial punishment (a plea sentence for a misdemeanor-like offense) went through, Amy was fined $500 and given a suspended rank reduction.
Master Sergeant Keith Milks, a public affairs officer in Amy’s former unit, the II Marine Expeditionary Force, says he can’t comment specifically on Amy’s case, as the administration action of the punishment and Amy’s personnel details are covered by privacy provisions. However, he says, her sentence is in keeping with the options for disciplining soldiers for breaking the prohibition on sex in a war zone.
At Amy’s request, she was sent home from Iraq, after a military psychiatrist determined that she was “too psychologically unstable” to remain, and diagnosed her with acute anxiety, PTSD, and depression. “They convinced themselves that anyone who would do a self-abortion is crazy,” Amy says. “It’s not a crazy thing. It’s something that rational, thinking women do when they have no options.”
Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, staff attorney for the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, says Amy’s horrifying story is the logical outcome of the longstanding military ban on abortion that affects 200,000 female service members as well as female military spouses and dependents living on military bases covered by the armed forces’ Tricare health coverage. Shocking as the story may be, Kolbi-Molinas says, “If you restrict women to unsafe abortions, this is what will happen.”
Military Women “Do Not Receive the Protection of the Constitution they Defend”
Starting in 1979, Defense Department appropriations bills have been used to restrict or prohibit the use of federal funds—meaning all military health coverage—for abortion services at overseas military hospitals. Although President Clinton reversed the ban shortly after taking office, anti-abortion forces in Congress made the ban permanent in 1995, preventing future presidents from altering the rules by executive order.
What began as a funding ban, compelling women to pay for abortion services themselves, was later extended into a more comprehensive embargo on performing abortions in any military hospital except in cases of rape, incest, or threat to the life of the mother. Rep. Susan Davis (D-CA), argued that “servicewomen do not receive the protection of the Constitution they defend,” and tried unsuccessfully in 2005 and 2006 to repeal the ban—or at least to bring it in line with current Medicaid standards by allowing abortion funding in rape and incest cases. Opponents like Kansas Republican Jim Ryan postured in response claiming that, “allowing self-funded abortions would simply turn our military hospitals overseas into abortion clinics.”
In fact, before Roe v. Wade the situation was reversed: servicewomen were pressured into having abortions due to a military policy of automatically discharging pregnant women. That policy ended with Crawford v. Cushman, a 1976 US Appeals Court case ruling that the discharge rule violated due process.
The result of the ban is that active-duty servicewomen and military dependents are faced with a number of equally unappealing options: venture out to local hospitals while overseas, to medical facilities that may have different standards of care, where medical workers may not speak English, or where there is animosity towards the United States; seek a back-alley abortion in a country that prohibits abortion; or undertake an arduous process of obtaining permission from commanding officers to fly home or to a neighboring country, find space on a military transport, or pay for a commercial flight home (a prohibitive cost for lower-ranking servicewomen), and return to their units aware that their superiors know intimate details about their medical records.
Kolbi-Molinas says the ACLU has received reports about commanding officers attempting to interfere with women taking leave to obtain abortions. Even for those who are able to obtain an abortion off-base, says Bethany Niebauer, a military spouse and writer at RH Reality Check, the lack of medical privacy in the military means women often return to social shaming “for making a choice with which her superiors might disagree.”
A General Accounting Office report on the issue in 2002 found that the policy was a humiliation for servicewomen, who must seek travel approval from commanding officers, many of whom “have not been adequately trained about the importance of women’s basic health care.” Furthermore, servicewomen may be uneasy with the appearance of requesting special treatment, or may face commanding officers who disapprove of abortion—a serious concern for women reliant on these officers for career advancement.
Vicki Saporta, President of the National Abortion Federation, says that military women seeking abortions face a no-win situation. “If you’re a woman in the military, you’re going to have to obtain a leave to get the care you need. If you’re honest about why you need that care, you put your military career in jeopardy. If you’re not honest, then you put your military career in jeopardy.”
Tags: abortion, evangelicals, military, roe v. wade, stupak
That this woman's career is more important than this baby's life?
I call BS on this. I am a woman who served 20 years in the Air Force, and nothing about this story rings true, other than the fact that her own selfishness won out. If it were a rape, she would have reported it, and it WOULD have been taken seriously. And she knows it.
This innocent life just got in her way, and she didn't have the guts to let him or her live and put him or her up for adoption. Okay, fine. Pay for it yourself, you coward. Just don't use my taxpayer dollars, because I want no part of killing that little life.
It is immoral to use taxpayer dollars to fund a massive military that exists only to kill people. ALL life is sacred.
Hold on now. You believe the military is immoral, and yet you served 20 years in the Air Force? I call BS.
And "If it were a rape, she would have reported it"? That's BS too.
I'm always amused by the "I don't want my tax dollars funding abortion" folks.
You know what a LOT of people are funding things they don't want to fund.
Public Schools?
Why should those without children be forced to pay for yours?
Or some religious sects who are against ANY medical treatment, even for life threatening illnesses?
Should their tax dollars not go to medicare?
How about people who actually are REALLY Pro-Life?
You know, the 100% Anti-War, Anti-Death Penalty crowd?
They don't want their tax money being used to fund the killing of life, but their tax dollars are used for it anyway.
Should we stop spending tax money on those things as well?
What I'm really trying to ask here is, are you willing to give other people with moral objections to certain things taxpayer money is used on the same treatment you are asking for?
There are lots of things I don't want to pay for that I'm quite sure you'd be willing to support, and vice versa.
"Why should those without children be forced to pay for yours?"
For the same reason we should all be "forced" to pay for someone's heart attack, through charity hospitals or insurance coverage, even though it's not our heart attack.
For the same reason we should all be "forced" to pay for police and fire coverage even though it's not us being mugged or not our houses burning down.
I can't believe anyone who might otherwise sympathize with progressive values could make this argument with a straight face.
Now, I don't agree with public school, but not because I don't want to pay for someone else's kids. I am happy to pay for someone else's kids when it comes to children's books in the public library, or children's programs in same. I think public school as it currently exists is bad for children's intellect and social development. But as some children don't have any other option for daytime care OR education, I shut my mouth and pay for it anyway.
It's part of being a social animal and living in society. If nothing else consider that even if you don't have children yourself, how you treat other people's children may very well have bearing on how they treat YOU in the future.
I don't get the militant childfree movement. I really don't. They are so divorced from reality as to be terrifying.
You'll note I also mentioned the extremely religious anti-med folks, and the extremely pacifistic in my argument, neither of which I am a part of.
I was just using various "We don't like these tax-funded' things.
I do use the public school argument alot because of several of my "Socialism is always bad" relatives were publicly educated, as a reminder it IS socialism.
The fact I didn't go through it, and have no children who will be sent through it, makes me a bit more willing to use that argument.
I personally don't really mind paying for public schools, even though I have no children and plan on keeping it that way.
It's just an example.
I, personally, have no more issue paying for it, than I do for any of the other stuff you listed.
(Well, that's a slight lie. Every now and then when I get reminded of stupid crap like banning classics like Huck Finn from the library, or only teaching kids abstinence in the idea that they'll all stay virgins till marriage, THEN I tend to get annoyed and go "Why are we paying for this!?!" but the attitude generally only lasts a couple of hours at a time)
What are YOU saying? That the anti-abortion movement is a front for the adoption industry?
The choices are not, "have an abortion or give it up for adoption." The choices are, "have an abortion, carry to term and parent, or give it up for adoption."
Now explain to the class why "carry to term and parent" is not an option for single military personnel. Oh, you won't? Fine, I will.
The military prohibits single parenthood. If you have a child when you sign up, you must relinquish custody to someone else before they will swear you in. If you have a child while you are in, you must relinquish custody. Similar prohibitions are not made for two servicemembers who marry and then have children. The military bends over backwards, in fact, to make sure one parent is always there for the kids. At least, in theory.
This is rank (pardon the pun) discrimination against single parents. But the military gets away with it because they're allowed to discriminate if they can argue it improves their readiness for war.
And as long as this continues you will see servicewomen seeking abortions when they might have otherwise parented. Adoption, mind you, is another matter entirely. Women who want to give their babies up for adoption do not seek abortions. Women who seek abortions have already decided they cannot cope with giving their babies away. The two issues aren't even related.
And until you have had to lose a child, don't demand it of anyone else. For all that they mouth platitudes about being compassionate, anti-choicers are heartless about the effects adoption has on both moms and children. And believe you me, there are effects--many of them bad.
So why exactly do women who serve deserve less rights and accessibility to abortion? Should it be because someone, somewhere disagrees?
This woman went to real extremes that would have been avoided if the military would not politicized women's bodies.
I don't know about the Air Force but in the Marines and the Army women are very often demeaned for their gender and will go to great lengths to prove they deserve to be there, which can lead to this type of extreme action.
It is actually quite common not to report rape...
70% never report it to the police, 1 in 6 women will be raped.
A study in Australia gave 5 main reasons for civilans not to report, and I'm sure it's a more stressful situation in the military.
Talks about rape being most common in male dominated societies (.... um, can anyone say military?.
You must have had wonderful units in which to serve, for which you are probably thankful. However, the military is not known for it's sensitivity or tact (and sorry, I don't know why this paragraph is linked to the prior one, it's just my opinion).
...and we are to believe that NO men are having sex in the warzone? So of course anybody who shows up with an STD which is easily treated with a discreet course of antibiotics is charged, right? Of course....
As a general rule, no one has medical privacy in the military. In my unit, there was this guy who got scratched by a cat that had rabies, and he had to go to the hospital. He got charged because there was a base order against petting the cats.
Almost every day I learn something new about how Conservatives bring damage and grief to more and more people. It disgusts me.
...was it the Conservatives that forced her to have unprotected sex? Did they force her to mutilate her own body? Did they force her to flush a dead human being down the toilet? You want to talk about disgusting? Anyone who would do such a thing has a lack of personal responsibility and you are as sick as that person!
She mentions in the article that the sex in question was rape, or rape like. Also, who are you to say that the sex was unprotected? And yes, it seems the religious conservative ideology made it impossible to obtain the abortion she wanted without jeopardizing her career, in the f***ing military no less. Also, you're a dude aren't you.
The Coat Hanger Project (2008) is a documentary film about abortion rights in the US. One of the interviews in the film is with a marine corps soldier who nearly died from trying to self-abort while serving in Iraq. For more information on the film or to view the trailer, visit thecoathangerproject.com.
The writer of this article has a misguided impression of what "constitutional right" means. Rabbis of some Jewish sects have a constitutional right to swing an innocent chicken over their heads and then kill the chicken, thinking that the chicken has subsumed all sins. But the taxpayers don't have to foot the bill for that barbaric procedure.
A woman has the constitutional right to have an abortion. There is a difference between a right to do something, and the obligation of the rest of us to pay for it.
Actually, I believe what the author is arguing is that military women's constitutional right to this procedure is *not* being granted.
Not true, the author clearly states that the soldier could go back to the U.S. and pay with their own money and have the procedure.
So in your example, it would be the military stopping those rabbis from doing so, not the Rabbi's asking for the military to pay. It would also mean the military would be killing lots of chickens on the tax payers dime but then claiming the rabbi's shouldn't be allowed to when those chickens are in the rabbi's uterus.
Was the man that got her pregnant slapped with an Article 92 as well?
And for the comment about rape being taken seriously in the military, please learn your fact. only 2-3% of all rapes in the military are ever prosecuted, over 90% of all rape victims are forced out of the military for the sole reason of reporting a rape.
I'm sorry that this website decided to remove my previous comment. I feel that those who read this blog should know that the statements made by "Amy" are outright lies. I do not say that I disagree with the overall sentiment of the article but as a journalist myself; I feel the writer has the responsibility to verify the accuracy of her source. In this case, she did not.
But we are supposed to believe your sourceless statement that Amy is a liar.
And believe that although the writer didn't verify the veracity you have verified that it is a lie? And you are asking to make the name public but wouldn't you already know the real name if you know Amy is a liar? You, as a journalist, would never say someone you are unable to identify is a liar, right? Then you would be doing the same thing you are claiming the author did. And THAT wouldn't make sense.
Actually, I DID post the real name and my comment was removed because of it. Thats why you are only seeing a part of my post. If you have any questions, I would be glad to answer them at my personnal email. ddog4341@aol.com
Well I am glad this site deleted your comment. That was obviously a lack of integrity on your part to post any names whether you know who she is or not.
Why don't you post your name so we can all research your veracity devil dog?
Maybe Amy doesn't think she was raped, was never pregnant, and never self-aborted. Maybe she went to sick call covered in ketchup. Maybe her command didn't punish her, she didn't suffer any psychological trauma, and the current policies don't need to change because this never happened. Yeah, right.
Hi, this is the author here with a quick note about names. Amy spoke to RD on condition on anonymity, and that agreement will be protected. Both Amy's unit and the Department of Defense were contacted for the story (and quoted above), but said that privacy provisions prevent them from commenting directly on Amy's story. Thanks.
No the source of the statement is me, who served with her in Iraq during the time she discusses, in very close quarters. And as the source, my name is Sgt Ted Macdonald, USMC
Maybe the holocaust never happened, too.
No, I'm pretty sure that in Germany, that sentiment would see you jailed. I was there in Fallujah, I lived through this experience with "Amy.” I was the one who had to pick up the slack for combat operations she no longer could participate in. I was the one who was there to comfort the father of her child as he wept at the loss of his progeny. I was the one who recommended help for her as she contemplated suicide. So, while I believe the holocaust happened, I cannot sway your uninformed opinions. What I CAN do is to tell the truth.
Was the father charged for having sex?
Was he charged as well for having sex? Did he realise that he might have commited rape, and regret that she felt it was rape?
Would he have had to carry the child in his body, and suffer the consequences?
Your profile pic looks just like you!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dMN1RCBOPw
Wow! Good catch, Armyvet! That's hilarious! I wonder what the Marines have to say about that.
"His" progeny? I'm sorry, dude, but a fetus inside a woman does not, in any way, belong to anyone but her.
Also, I was comparing your statements to that of a holocaust denial. Clearly, something happened because of her lack of choice.
I was a medical records clerk in the Army from 1992-1995. 71G back then, I don't know what the designation is now but it's changed.
Anyway, the Privacy Act of 1974 is the military's version of HIPAA (or however you spell it). No one except the patient and patient's doctor, not even the patient's own spouse (parents excepted, if the patient was a minor), was to look at the chart. Ever.
Soldiers could and did get in trouble for doing stupid things that got them hurt, and there may have been regulations that allowed the treating physician to report such behavior (it's been a long time and I don't remember), and usually the soldier was expected to tell their NCOIC or platoon sergeant why they were going on sick call. But to let someone come in and read the chart just because? No. We were not allowed to do that.
Soldiers undergoing drug treatment or soldiers whose families were undergoing abuse counseling had their records locked up even tighter. We as records clerks were obliged to escort the charts whenever the patient had an appointment in the clinic.
So while there are ways superior officers and NCOs can find out that a female servicemember has had an abortion, it's not by reading her charts. Or it had better not be, otherwise someone is violating federal law. In that case I would advise any woman facing this issue to contact her military post's inspector general office to inquire about filing a complaint.
Not that I think that will be the be-all, end-all. I remember well the old-boy network that infused interactions between troops during my time in, and I understand that hasn't changed much. But if everyone facing this crisis just sits on their hands and does nothing about it, nothing is ever going to change.
What if a doctor just tells the superiors what's going on, even if they don't physically show them a chart? Is that legal?
Yes, as the other commenter stated, this is about the Doctor sharing information. Or the E4 tech. This is about gossip.
For all its talk about freedom and liberty, my very own military is most certainly clueless on how to better serve the women who serve it.
I am so goddamned sick and fucking tired of this whole "I don't want my tax dollars going to fund abortions." Well, jackasses, I fucking pay taxes, too - and the rest of the women in the military who need abortions - guess what? They also fucking pay taxes. Apparently, a "thankful nation" is only thankful to those who fucking think like them - which is to say not thinking at all.
But the problem isn't just in Iraq or Afghanistan - imagine yourself a woman and pregnant while serving in Korea or Japan or something like that - how the hell are you supposed to get acceptable healthcare for your abortions?
You know what's fucking sad? That some of the women in some of the countries these women are fighting in probably have more access to abortion care than the Soldiers themselves.
I fucking love my Army, and I love taking care of Soldiers, but goddamn it, it pisses me off so much because there are so many idiots and zealots in leadership positions
so this is a plausible story, to cut out the he-said, she-said, could shoulda woulda sort of argument. This is possible?
Denying women medical care in the name of life makes no sense. Everyone knows that religious tyrants cause this problem. They force their strange ideas about sexuality on all citizens regardless our own religious points-of-view.
No where in the Constitution does it give rights to women who want abortions. All of us have the right of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
What I would like to know is why are these women not practicing birth control? Why should I or anyone else provide money to pay for a woman making the wrong choice. I do not want to be a party to murder.
Be responsible for yourself! Birth control is a lot cheaper than Abortion. And you don't have mental anguish that accompanies abortion if you protect yourself. Abortion is muder. Ten commandments Number 6: Thou shall not kill.
Innocent life should be protected not defiled.
I am a christian and against abortion. And being a woman am tired of other women not being responsible with their bodies.
Birth control methods can and do fail. And, this woman may not have been on birth control, not intending to have sex in a war zone, since she says she was raped. She was betrayed by a fellow soldier. If you're such a Christian, you should have more compassion, not just for fetuses, but for a woman soldier who is serving to protect your freedom.
so this is a plausible story, to cut out the he-said, she-said, could shoulda woulda sort of argument. This is possible?
sorry, you probably rock, but I meant this to be on the prior comment...
Comments closed
The comments for this story have been closed. Thank you to everyone who participated.