Group Cites Dangers of Submarine Air to Pregnant Women
By Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers
Earlier this month, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, voiced his support for allowing women on submarines, and now he's facing a challenge from a group eager to keep women off the boats that stay some six months under the ocean's surface. The Center for Military Readiness says that there is a bigger issue at stake: Bad air on subs—not the proximity to nuclear materials—could cause birth defects for women sailors' children. "The problem is not nuclear power, it is the air, which is constantly recycled in the undersea environment. Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide levels in the air are safe for adults but a high-risk cause of birth defects in unborn children—particularly in the early weeks of gestation when a woman may not even know she is pregnant," CMR's Elaine Donnelly said in a statement today. "By thoughtlessly pushing for co-ed submarines, apparently to please military and civilian feminists, Admiral Mullen has demonstrated an appalling unawareness of the health hazards involved, and a callous disregard for quality-of-life hardships that are difficult enough for sailors in the Silent Service."
Currently, the Navy is only studying the impact of putting women on the submarines. But Donnelly, whose group works on issues involving women in the military, argues that Mullen's recent comments show that the Pentagon hasn't fully examined the health impact. She warned that should a female sailor on a sub suffer a life-threatening problem with her pregnancy, the sub would have to surface to transfer the woman to a hospital and thus reveal its secret location. "Britain, Canada, and the American Navy do not put women on submarines primarily because of these irresolvable health risks and operational complications," she said. "In addition, habitability standards on subs are well below minimum standards on surface ships. Crowd them even more, in order to provide separate quarters for female officers and enlisted sailors, and morale as well as discipline would suffer."
CMR has established a webpage to highlight its concerns about birth defects.
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Reader Comments
sobersubmrnr
I have a clue. I've been to sea with women on a submarine. Have you?
Spare me the party line with the "Navy Core Values" crap. Mixed-gender surface ships are basically haze gray high schools, with all sorts of screwing around in the gear lockers, berthing areas, you name it. I've seen that first hand too. That includes catching two people feeling each other up on the signal bridge, in broad daylight and underway. When the hormone-laden people in the surface fleet adhere to "Navy Core Values" then maybe we can talk.
Get a clue
1. When men are confined in close quarters for significant amount of time homosexual acts can and do occur. Happens in prison all the time, why would we assume that submarines are different? It is because we are professional and truly understand our Core Values (and also that we have this little thing called self control) that we don't screw everything in sight all the time, day and night.
2. Pregnancy, in most cases (particularly in the first trimester), is not a serious medical condition. Gee whiz, if pregnancy was so freaking dangerous how did we all manage to be born generation after generation? Navy leadership needs to get more proactive with family planning counseling for both male and female Sailors. There is plenty of time on shore duty for having babies. There are also contraceptives that prevent menstruation for a whole year (killing two birds...pregnancy and what to do with hygiene products).
3. The comments about pink submarines are rude and insulting and are NOT in line with Navy Core Values (grow up), the comments from wives who believe that female Sailors will seek out your husbands for sex are rude and insulting-your fears about adultery say more about your marriage than they do about the women who might serve with your husband.
4. Several comments about pregnancy indicate that the commentator has no idea what OPNAVINST 6000.1 says about it. Always a good idea to review the instruction prior to making wild guesses about what rules apply to pregnant Sailors.
Women in other countries
With the exception of the Royal Australian Navy, women on submarines live with the men. They share berthing and sanitary facilities and have no privacy. That environment would be totally unacceptable in the US Navy. Sexual attitudes (and sexual politics) are entirely different in say, Sweden. In the RAN, their submarine force of six boats is so short of personnel that they only have three in commission and are talking about dropping that to two. For a crew of 59, they have a six-person berthing area set aside for the women which is rarely full. Many Aussie submariners got out when the *political* decision was made to put women on the boats. The RAN as a whole has a problem with personnel retention, but the submarine squadron has it the worst. I wonder how things would change if the women were removed? Maybe more men would volunteer or maybe their wives would let them. Food for thought.
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