Pregnancy thread

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JUST A MOM.
The academy is starting to reflect the fleet.
A pregnant sailor will not be deployed on a ship
A single parent can opt out of sea duty for type 3 duty.
A single pregnant sailor enjoys all the rights and privileges of a sailor, "some cases a college degree" while incurring none of the responsibilities..
Many female sailors of the fleet have known and used this tactic for years. I thought the academies taught things like accountability for your actions. Should just send the cadets to Berkley...
 
Right. What this issue appears to be about is a woman. The old "double standard" rearing it's ugly head.

See, now it's a hands off issue, no more discussion or else you're a sexist.

Clockwork.
 
JUST A MOM.
The academy is starting to reflect the fleet.
A pregnant sailor will not be deployed on a ship
A single parent can opt out of sea duty for type 3 duty.
A single pregnant sailor enjoys all the rights and privileges of a sailor, "some cases a college degree" while incurring none of the responsibilities..
Many female sailors of the fleet have known and used this tactic for years. I thought the academies taught things like accountability for your actions. Should just send the cadets to Berkley...
 
See, now it's a hands off issue, no more discussion or else you're a sexist.

Clockwork.

Maybe I'm a little off....I thought we already stated, males with depends should not graduate either. True it is harder to figure out, but that doesn't mean it's "ok".

A cadet will have sex in the barracks at West Point this fall.....

if no one else knows, nothing happens, but when someone does figure it out, it should become a problem for both members. MALES AND FEMALES (incase JAM had that question).
 
Except the three times waivers were granted.

Not according to official press releases.

7Jul09 - The Naval Academy may have graduated its first pregnant midshipman in late May after officials granted a waiver from a regulation that would have required her to take a leave of absence or be dismissed.

Academy Graduates Pregnant Mid - US Naval Academy Alumni Association & Foundation

Top Defense Department officials allowed a pregnant Naval Academy midshipman to graduate in May, the first known such case in the 33 years women have been admitted to the school.

Pregnancy waiver was 1st at Naval Academy - Navy Times

You say three waivers have been granted? Links?
 
From your second link:

May’s pregnant midshipman became the fourth since 2005 to require a waiver to graduate because of parental responsibilities; the three earlier cases were men who fathered children.
 
Uh oh...Bruce Fleming weighed in on this issue a while back...
http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,91379,00.html

Policy Won't Solve Sex Problem
Bruce Fleming | March 17, 2006Several recent cases of alleged sexual aggression at the Naval Academy have raised serious issues about the broader problems associated with sexuality and gender integration in the armed forces. National news outlets reported that the football team's quarterback was accused of rape. More recent articles have detailed the case of a member of the crew team who was forced out after what he claims was consensual sex; the woman involved has not been forced to resign. Is this sudden push to clean house by the powers-that-be (who apparently are “shocked, shocked ”) only a big act to please critics who demand we do something? Is it long-overdue reform? Or is it perhaps merely the inevitable result of putting a minority of women into a boiling pot of testosterone-charged young men at a place like the Naval Academy -- or the military as a whole? What frosts my behind (my father-in-law uses a shorter word here) is that we set up an impossible situation and somehow still manage to be surprised when we get problems.

Eighty-three percent of our midshipmen are male. We can assume that our students have at least the normal level of sexual energy, if not more. (We skew our whole admissions system to allow entrance to show-team members, but that's another story, perhaps.) We're sending mixed messages: We say, “Be hard-charging!” and then are shocked, shocked, when this is expressed in sexual ways.

Here's our recipe for problems: We put powder kegs of libido in a single huge building, Bancroft Hall, and add a respectable minority of women to spark things off. And then (it gets better) we make sex in the hall illegal, as well as sex anywhere between members of the same company, with anyone in your chain of command, and a thousand other rules.

So the problem is, at least for administrative purposes, solved. We've outlawed sex, so it isn't happening. (Hah.) But that also means, we can't discuss the complexity of human sexuality, or responsible expression of that sexuality. All we do is zap them when they screw things up. Make sense to you? Not to me.

There's that Fleming at it again, my critics will say, voices dripping with sarcasm that means: He's a civilian. He just doesn't get it. And the ever-so-sarcastic tone of voice continues (I hear it often): Sex in the Hall is illegal because sex on a boat is illegal. If they can't keep it in their pants at the Academy, how do you expect them to do so on a boat?

Let's consider this. First, they don't keep it in their pants on boats. An astonishing number of women come back pregnant from every deployment, not to speak of sex acts that don't end in pregnancy, either because somebody has the elementary good sense to use or demand a condom, or because the sex in question couldn't lead to pregnancy. (You figure it out.)

Second, the Naval Academy isn't a ship, and their time here isn't a deployment measured in months. It's four years of college at a time when their hormones are raging and they're not focused on a single Mission, because it's not a Mission, it's their life, which for many of them leads to marriage. (Most of these marriages end in divorce: go figure.)

Third, this is a problem we're creating for ourselves: no other college in the U.S. except the military ones has, since the l960s, tried to act in loco parentis, limiting the gender of visitors to dorm rooms, policing sex. If they do it, they have to work out with the roommates that it doesn't disturb things. Besides, who cares if they do their assigned chores and show up for work on time?

I've written a whole book on society's attempt to stamp out sex, called Sexual Ethics. The more social the situation, I suggested, the stronger the impulse to stamp out the private relationships created by sex. In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud suggested that all societies repressed sex because they needed to harness the steam from repressing sex into their institutions. I think he's wrong: it's not all societies, only those situations that need full-time access to people, and so deny them personal lives. That's the military in a nutshell, and I can certainly see the point of putting off sexual expression for short-term deployment. Anybody can go without for a limited number of months. It's when the months stretch to years and the “ship” isn't going anywhere that things get problematic.

I think of the highway billboard that says: “Talk to your kids about sex before somebody else does.” At the Naval Academy, we're failing to talk to them about responsible sex. And this is at an institution so dedicated to the body. Do they think they can have healthy young men and women without sexuality? Nice try, I suppose. To me it just looks suicidal, and destructive to all concerned. And I'm sure this dynamic isn't limited to Annapolis, it military-wide.

So talk about it, give the guidelines for educated choices. Tell the men it isn't studly to force themselves on women, only cowardly. Tell the women they have to know what's happening and take steps to prevent it, if that's what they want to happen. Acknowledge the element of aggression in sex, and of power play, and talk above all about how extremely complex it is, and yet at the same time such an integral part of life.

All this requires acknowledging that it's going to happen, whether or not we talk about it. Only if you can talk about it, you can educate them. If you don't, you can't. Nobody's talking to our mids about sex, until we punish them for screwing up. And whose fault, under the circumstances, is that?
 
I never accused her of hiding her pregnancy. I stated for myself I wore zip up jeans until I was 22 weeks along, and what I was implying was that we do not know if she came to them the day she took her EPT or 14 weeks later when she was doing her outprocessing. None of us know that except for her and the family

Granted she may not have broken 1 darn written rule, but she is not an innocent puppy here. I will not condemn her because she probably already sees herself behind the 8 ball, and her professional life will be very difficult for the next few years.

FWIW IMHO you can't excuse cadets for having sex in barracks when enlisted could get a letter of reprimand. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. The military is not ala carte and you don't get to pick and choose. I am sure there is a reg about men being in a womens barracks. They were pushing the envelope. They rolled the dice and luckily she didn't get snake eyes.
 
From your second link:

May’s pregnant midshipman became the fourth since 2005 to require a waiver to graduate because of parental responsibilities; the three earlier cases were men who fathered children.

The three earlier men weren't pregnant.
Just saying....:biggrin:
 
I never accused her of hiding her pregnancy. I stated for myself I wore zip up jeans until I was 22 weeks along, and what I was implying was that we do not know if she came to them the day she took her EPT or 14 weeks later when she was doing her outprocessing. None of us know that except for her and the family

Granted she may not have broken 1 darn written rule, but she is not an innocent puppy here. I will not condemn her because she probably already sees herself behind the 8 ball, and her professional life will be very difficult for the next few years.

FWIW IMHO you can't excuse cadets for having sex in barracks when enlisted could get a letter of reprimand. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. The military is not ala carte and you don't get to pick and choose. I am sure there is a reg about men being in a womens barracks. They were pushing the envelope. They rolled the dice and luckily she didn't get snake eyes.

You know the next retort will be, "How do you know it was another 1/C Midn...or for that matter, an underclassmen?
 
Quoted from MIDREGS: "Parenthood is defined as having legal, financial or custodial obligations for a child or children, as determined by court adjudication, self-admission, or other evidence. Any Midshipman who becomes pregnant, causes the pregnancy of another, or incurs the obligations of parenthood, must report the condition to their Chain of Command. Midshipmen who become pregnant and choose not to resign will be allowed to go on a leave of absence of no more than one year. Midshipmen who are pregnant or have incurred the obligations of parenthood and who fail to resign or request a leave of absence will be separated."

So it seems as if there were two tasks for this pregnant Midshipman to complete in order to stay in regulations:

1. Tell the Chain of Command.
2. Request a Leave of Absence, Resign, or be Separated.


As for #1, the diction in MIDREGS does not say she must report it immediately, so even if she waited until her 40th week the rule was not broken.

For #2, she understandably had an amount of time to make a decision regarding her future. Understanding the clause of "Nothing in these regulations should be construed as taking priority over sound judgment or doing the right thing. Every situation is not covered. There may be situations where good judgment will be the only regulation," she requested a waiver and it was granted. This rule was not broken.

NO RULES OR REGULATIONS WERE BROKEN. I think it is disgusting that people are (or were in the previous thread) slandering this former midshipman's honor and integrity when she did nothing out of line. Nowhere in the regulations is pregnancy or even becoming a biological parent forbidden, only having "legal, financial, or custodial obligations".

Waivers are requested all the time for different things; some are granted and others are not. This was a decision by the administration, and we do not know all of the details so it is also ridiculous to judge their decision.
 
NO RULES OR REGULATIONS WERE BROKEN. I think it is disgusting that people are (or were in the previous thread) slandering this former midshipman's honor and integrity when she did nothing out of line. Nowhere in the regulations is pregnancy or even becoming a biological parent forbidden, only having "legal, financial, or custodial obligations".

I'll give you that, no mention of wrong doing in being pregnant at the Academy. lol

BTW, that sounds like the Bill Clinton questioning the definition of "is" :shake:
 
soylent,
I am not maligning her, nor do I feel anybody else is in this case. We are questioning the slippery slope where they (USNA) decide exactly where is the line. MAx is right it depends on "what is" is or the old cliche...I am a little bit pregmamy
 
Pima - chillax - Maximus made the accusation way back in post #7.

If you want to talk about sex among Mids (or Cadets) in or out of the Barracks - I suggest you read "The Long Gray Line". Back in the 60's they snuck in civilian girls.

NO RULES OR REGULATIONS WERE BROKEN. I think it is disgusting that people are (or were in the previous thread) slandering this former midshipman's honor and integrity when she did nothing out of line. Nowhere in the regulations is pregnancy or even becoming a biological parent forbidden, only having "legal, financial, or custodial obligations".

Waivers are requested all the time for different things; some are granted and others are not. This was a decision by the administration, and we do not know all of the details so it is also ridiculous to judge their decision.
Hear, Hear. Finally some common sense.

Pima - again USNA didn't decide where the line is - DOD made that decision.

About that double standard, apparently Maximus and Luigi can excuse a male for getting a girl pregnant - after all "boys will be boys".

What I really see here are some very self-righteous parents who have been blessed with "perfect" children (so far). They can't possibly believe that anything but perfection should be tolerated, unless it's a male getting a girl knocked up.

pedro - "deterrent effect of the death penalty" wow. There is an option open to mids or cadets who find themselves pregnant.... abortion. I am pretty sure the Government won't ask women to choose between abortion and their career.

I really don't see her case as any different than a football player who tears his ACL and needs to spend a year rehabbing after surgery. The get commissioned and are given a cushy job at the academy as recruiter or assistant coach.
 
About that double standard, apparently Maximus and Luigi can excuse a male for getting a girl pregnant - after all "boys will be boys".

Don't put words in my mouth, Mom. :thumbdown:

I never posted anything excusing a male mid.

You're treading on dangerous ground with a malicious accusation.

Retract it. :unhappy:
 
Keep the arguement clean otherwise the mods will lock it.


I don't need to read the book, back in the late 80's there was a thing called JOC night and the townies came in to marry a flyer...think Officer and a Gentlemen. I also remember that the students living on base had no notice inspections of the Q's to make sure there was no member of the opposite sex sleeping in the room. I actually never stayed in the VOQ's with Bullet out of fear that he would get in trouble.

As for Luigi and Max, I think you are taking a jump, and Luigi is right, you took the posts wrong.
 
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Saw the article regarding this situation a couple of months ago. I knew that it would come up sooner or later. I had hoped that it would never be a topic of general discussion. The woman was commissioned. Navy decision. End of discussion. No one on this site knows how far along she might have been or how her pregnancy will effect her future as a Naval Officer. There are many mothers (single/married) (Officer/Enlisted) currently serving who have requested and been granted maternity leave and returned to their units to admirably continue their service obligation. Until the end of gestation she is not technicaly a "parent" nor legaly responsible for a dependent and therefore has not violated the rules and rgulations as written or interpreted under the UCMJ. Then again there are other Mothers who have to make a mountain out of a mole hill and become barrack room lawyers/latrine lawyers.
 
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Probably unique to the sea services.....the qualification process and the importance of that first year. Don't know if she's going aviation, SWO, etc, but, especially if it's SWO, she's going to find herself FAR behind the qualification curve. Generally all of those pregnant officers and enlist wait a little later....and yes there are appropriate times to have children, but doing it before you even report? Not the best idea. :frown:
 
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