A pregnancy ban has been issued for female soldiers while deployed to northern Iraq.

The Army general commanding U.S. forces in northern Iraq has added pregnancy to the list of prohibitions for personnel under his command.

The policy, which went into effect Nov. 4, makes it possible to face punishment, including a court-martial and jail time, for becoming pregnant or impregnating a servicemember, according to the wording of the policy and confirmations from Army officials.

The rule governs all those serving under Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo III, who commands Multi-National Division-North, including Balad, Kirkuk, Tikrit, Mosul and Samarra. According to the order, it is “applicable to all United States military personnel, and to all civilians, serving with, employed by, or accompanying” the military in northern Iraq, with few exceptions.

Someone would violate the policy by “becoming pregnant, or impregnating a soldier, while assigned to the Task Force Marne (Area of Operations), resulting in the redeployment of the pregnant soldier,” according to the order.

The policy also applies to married couples who are at war together, Army spokesman Maj. Lee Peters told Stars and Stripes in an e-mail message. Both the husband and wife could face punishment under the policy.

Peters said that, despite the broad wording of the policy, it is meant to apply only when pregnancies affect a unit’s ability to perform its mission.

“When a soldier becomes pregnant or causes a soldier to become pregnant through consensual activity,” Peters said, “the redeployment of the pregnant soldier creates a void in the unit and has a negative impact on the unit’s ability to accomplish its mission. Another soldier must assume the pregnant soldier’s responsibilities.”

This makes perfect sense to me, and I applaud it.

Feminists, unsurprisingly, are up in arms over it. Over at Feministing, they actually had the ACLU writing about it.

The pregnant servicewoman is really the canary in the mine here: Inevitably her pregnancy will be revealed and she will be punished. However, the man who impregnated her will only be punished if she turns him in. Already, according to news reports, one woman who has been punished and sent home under the policy has refused to reveal who her partner was. It is reasonable to think that many more servicewomen will refuse to turn in their fellow soldiers, thereby making this an equal opportunity policy in name only.

Moreover, this policy will eviscerate existing Department of Defense policy that protects the anonymity of sexual assault victims while ensuring that they can get the services they need. Of course, Maj. Gen. Cucolo has stated he won’t punish anyone who becomes pregnant as a result of an assault, but under his policy pregnant assault victims will have to publicly come forward in order to avoid punishment.

If we really want to help servicewomen avoid unplanned pregnancies and maintain military readiness, why don’t we ensure that birth control and emergency contraception are readily available to all servicewomen, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan? Currently, Department of Defense policy does not require that emergency contraception be available (it’s optional); and a recent report by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America suggests that, “due to space,” other common forms of birth control are not always available either.

It does a dishonor to the more than 200,000 servicewomen who serve in Iraq and Afghanistan to suggest that they do not take deployment seriously. To guarantee that they can continue to serve on par with men, Maj. Gen. Cucolo should make sure that his servicewomen can access the reproductive health care they need, including contraception and emergency contraception, rather than punishing them for getting pregnant.

Yes, this ACLU writer is correct in that there are certainly some women who will not turn in the man who impregnated them. And while it’s possible for servicewomen to be getting pregnant from rape, and not consensual intercourse, we all know that in the vast majority of cases that isn’t what’s happening. And there are exceptions for sexual assault in the ban, anyways. While birth control is not readily available in Iraq, it doesn’t mean that it’s OK for female soldiers to be getting pregnant. They are there to be doing a job, plain and simple. And they don’t need to be focusing on getting it on with the soldiers they are deployed with (and the men don’t need to be getting it on with the female soldiers either — it does in fact go both ways).

And while Feministing and the ACLU are saying that men won’t be punished for this, they’re lying. In fact, of the seven soldiers who have been punished, three are men. And while yes, they could potentially be court-martialed, none of the seven soldiers punished have been. They’re all being disciplined on a lower level — except for one, one of the male soldiers, the only one to receive a harsher punishment.

The four soldiers who became pregnant were given letters of reprimand that will not remain a part of the permanent military file, Cucolo said, as were two of the male soldiers.

The third male soldier, a noncommissioned officer who is married and impregnated a subordinate who is not his wife, was also charged with fraternization and given a permanent letter of reprimand, Cucolo said.

One of the female soldiers declined to say who impregnated her and the unit “let it drop,” Cucolo said, adding that he had no plans to further investigate paternity.

Clearly, this is not career-ending disciplinary action, except perhaps in the case of the NCO who was caught cheating on his wife with a subordinate.

Meanwhile, Jill at Feministe had but just one comment:\

I understand not wanting soldiers to get pregnant while in combat zones. I don’t understand court martialing them.

Well, like most liberals, Jill can’t understand because she has no clue about how the military operates. Men and women who get deployed hump like bunnies when they’re overseas together. Not all of them do, but many of them do. (Heck, they even do it here at Lejeune.) It’s not in any way uncommon for soldiers to be having sex while they’re deployed, which is the entire reason this ban had to be made. And just the act of having sex is fraternization, which is not allowed in the military. It’s not often punished because it doesn’t harm the mission, but if a female soldier has sex with another soldier and gets pregnant, then she is potentially harming the mission. She then has to be sent home, which leaves the unit one man short, and that can be a problem for the unit.

The commenters at Feministe, of course, just can’t understand this. One actually said that the men should all just be sterilized. Another likened pregnancy to “accidentally” getting measles:

Oh, good lord. Can folks be court-martialed for catching measles or something as well? I mean, unplanned pregnancy and measles are things most people want to avoid, especially as a soldier overseas. And most people take precautions to avoid them. On the other hand, no precaution is perfect.

Exactly. No precaution is perfect. Which is why even if birth control was readily available, soldiers should be abstaining from sex while they’re deployed. I know feminists are all about whatever feels right in the moment, but sometimes you have to actually think about what you are doing and the consequences your actions could bring you. And clearly, as there have been three out of seven men disciplined for impregnating female soldiers, this isn’t a sexist policy.

Another Feministe commenter apparently believes in the stork theory:

[I]t is quite thoroughly inefficient and hostile to penalize, after the fact, having developed a bodily process that pretty much decides whether to happen on its own. One does not turn pregnancy/fertility on and off at will; as such it’s an involuntary action legitimately separated from the parts the people involved have control over.

Seriously?! Pregnancy is not an “involuntary action” that no one has control over. There is one way and one way only to get pregnant, and that is to have sex. So unless a girl is raped, then she willingly took the chance, whether she used protection or not. Birth control pills and condoms are not foolproof, much though feminists try to convince women that they are. And surprisingly, browsing the comments I found a lot of commenters following the theory that this order is punishing “female biology” — as if pregnancy is just a spontaneous condition that no one has any control over, like farting or something. Several soldiers, one female, tried talking some sense into the feminists, but of course it didn’t take.

The point here is responsibility, something feminists and liberals alike of course abhor. There is a serious problem in the Army with soldiers deploying and then shacking up together. The general is responding to this. Maybe now, some of these soldiers might take it a little more seriously and think twice before they engage in some stress-relieving casual sex.

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