Commander softens punishment for pregnancy - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

Commander softens punishment for pregnancy

The two-star general who planned to punish soldiers for getting pregnant backed down after meeting with Army Chief of Staff George Casey.

Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo, commander of Multi-National Division-North, met with Casey in Ramadi a day after making headlines with his General Order No. 1, which calls for disciplinary action against female and male soldiers for pregnancies.

During the meeting, Casey gave him “great guidance and great professional development,” Cucolo told National Public Radio.

Cucolo told reporters he had never intended to court-martial soldiers. He wanted to make soldiers consider the void left by “anyone who leaves this fight earlier than expected” due to a “personal choice.”

“I have not ever considered a court-martial for this. I do not ever see myself putting a soldier in jail for this,” Cucolo said in a Dec. 22 conference call with more than a dozen reporters. “I wanted to encourage my soldiers to think before they acted and understand their behavior and actions have consequences.”

In the same call, Cucolo claimed that he received no guidance from senior leaders before or after the order was publicized.

“Gen. Casey declined to discuss personal conversations with Maj. Gen. Cucolo,” said Brig. Gen. Lewis Boone, an Army spokesman. Cucolo’s previous assignment was head of Army public affairs.

The Army has struggled with balancing parenthood and soldier readiness ever since it added a significant number of women to its ranks, as far back as the first Gulf War. Reports from the 4th Infantry Division, for example, show that of 15,000 soldiers across its five brigades this year, it has redeployed 32 soldiers for pregnancy.

U.S. Central Command directives dictate that doctors report pregnant soldiers to their chains of command and that pregnant soldiers must be sent home within 14 days.

The removal of a soldier places a burden on the soldiers who remain, said Cucolo. Many women fill “high-impact jobs,” such as piloting helicopters, running satellite communications and re-arming aircraft, he said.

Cucolo’s order was enacted Nov. 4, and it applies solely to the 22,000 soldiers, including civilians and married couples, operating in Ninewa, Kirkuk, Tikrit, Salah ad-Din and Diyala provinces. About 1,700 of them are women.

Stars and Stripes newspaper first reported on the order Dec. 19. General Order No. 1 outlines the pregnancy policy amid other prohibitions — alcohol, drugs and pornography among them — and offers a range of punishments, including administrative or judicial action under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Cucolo’s order angered the National Organization of Women and a group of female Democratic senators who called the order “deeply misguided” in a letter to Army Secretary John McHugh and demanded it be rescinded.

They said they feared the policy could deter female soldiers from seeking timely medical care, “with potentially serious consequences for mother and child” and that “the threat of criminal sanctions ... goes far beyond what is needed to maintain good order and discipline.”

“We can think of no greater deterrent to women contemplating a military career than the image of a pregnant woman being severely punished simply for conceiving a child,” they wrote.

Seven soldiers have been disciplined under Cucolo’s order. Four female and two male soldiers were given local letters of reprimand, which will not stay in their permanent files.

A married sergeant who impregnated a subordinate received the most severe punishment, said Cucolo, who placed a letter in the soldier’s permanent file because he also violated adultery and fraternization policies.

In all, eight pregnant soldiers under Cucolo’s command have been sent home: the four given letters of reprimand and four others who were not disciplined because they conceived before arriving in the war zone.

Cucolo said he is not considering making available emergency contraception, also called the “morning-after pill.” Army policy, he said, is to redeploy pregnant soldiers from the war zone.

Army spokesman George Wright said Cucolo’s order is “not an Army-wide policy,” but that Cucolo was within his rights to tailor his General Order No. 1.

Cucolo said he consulted subordinates, commissioned and noncommissioned, male and female, and all supported it “100 percent.”

“I was in a position where I could implement a policy where maybe we would save two or three or four or more of my soldiers and keep them in the fight,” Cucolo said. “I have just noted the loss of incredibly talented soldiers, due to pregnancy, in past assignments.”

Eugene Fidell, a military law professor at Yale and president of the National Institute of Military Justice, said he believed that the order is legal and that it exposes the intersection between “the needs for good order and discipline and society’s expectations of privacy and personal autonomy.”

“It’s a reminder of the things that distinguish military service from normal life,” said Fidell. “Things are different in the military.”