Kingsley Browne, a professor of law at Wayne State University, has recently concluded a series of posts explicating the main argument of his new book, Co-ed Combat: The New Evidence That Women Shouldn’t Fight the Nation’s Wars (Sentinel, 2007). Hat tip to Elektradig, who thinks “Professor Browne Professor Browne makes a powerful case,” and adds “I would be fascinated to see what military historians such as Mark Grimsley have to say on the subject. ”
Well, let me see what I can do.
The posts are at The Volokh Conspiracy. In reverse order, they are:
- Co-ed Combat – Closing Thoughts
- Co-ed Combat – Responses to Comments
- Co-ed Combat — Pregnancy and Single Motherhood
- Co-ed Combat – Cohesion and Trust
- Co-ed Combat — Combat Motivation
- Co-ed Combat – Some Responses to Comments
- Co-ed Combat – Psychological Sex Differences
- Co-ed Combat – Physical Sex Differences and Their Continued Importance
- Co-ed Combat – Overview
I haven’t read them yet. I did check Browne’s web site at Wayne State and discovered that in addition to his disapproval of women in combat roles, he has been critical of policies and laws regarding sexual harassment (“the cure can be worse than the disease”), women in science (“biological factors should not be ignored”), and the “glass ceiling” for women (he offers a “Darwinian view” that it’s a non-problem). For that matter he has also been a sustained critic of affirmative action for minorities.
I doubt that Browne arrived at these positions through disinterested intellectual analysis, and it’s unreasonable to think that he could or should. On matters like this, nearly all of us find arguments that support gut-level convictions. And let’s be frank: I doubt that any amount of countervailing argument would cause Browne to alter his viewpoint, just as I’m pretty sure that no amount of argument would convince me that women have no business in roles that would put them in harm’s way.
Basically I concur with Linda Grant De Pauw in her book Battle Cries and Lullabies: Women in War from Prehistory to the Present (University of Oklahoma Press, 1998): “Everyone has opinions on ‘women in combat’ and ‘gays in the military,’ both of which are talk show staples, so there is no need to go into the arguments here. Since neither side is interested in listening to the other, the debate is repetitious and impossible to resolve” (275).
So what’s the solution? As far as I’m concerned, it’s to avoid a fruitless point / counterpoint debate — if you like that stuff, you’ll find plenty of it elsewhere on the blogosphere — and instead try to understand the basic premises that frame the discussion. It would be a sheer power play for me to delegitimize Browne’s perspective simply because it flows from an obvious political point of view, just as it would be a power play for Browne to delegitimize perspectives that differ from his by imposing that tired label, “politically correct,” though plainly those perspectives also have political underpinnings.
I’ll address Browne’s argument (and as many other points of view as I can) in future posts. For now, I mostly want to give you a heads up that Browne’s posts are there, and suggest that if, like me, you’ve not yet read them, you might go have a look.
Part 1 – Part 2
11 Comments
I would cite 2 concrete examples. The Red Army in WW2 made extensive and effective use of women. The US Navy currently has women in all roles except NSW and submarines, and IMO it brings in a far larger talent pool.
The Red Army was known for its ruthlessness, but I don’t know anything about its policies on woman soldiers who got pregnant against orders. Were they involuntarily aborted? Shot? (That would lead to the women finding effective abortion methods for themselves.) Turned out to fend for themselves in a war zone? I’d be very interested to hear how the system worked, but it might not give us many hints about how to make our system work.
I think Jaron’s comment about “talent pool” will be central. Women are a resource, and the question is whether the military can effectively use that resource. To me the biggest obvious issue is unplanned pregnancy. In normal times that’s something that can be worked around. It isn’t necessarily such a bad thing — the population as a whole is reproducing at below replacement, and if military service gets women in touch with their desire to have children, the advantages to the society might be worth the inconvenience to the military. Maybe.
The military would be ideally placed to do DNA testing to determine fatherhood, when military personnel are the fathers, and to arrange child support if the couple doesn’t choose to marry. A man who fathers more military women’s children than he can support is perhaps more of a problem than the women he gets pregnant.
Perhaps in wartime it might make sense to use truly effective contraception plus mandatory early abortion to make sure that women can function in their assigned jobs for the duration. But those are hard choices that only need to be made in the crunch. In the meantime we can work around the problems to exploit this talent pool, and choosing which cost-effective roles women can take should be done by military logistics people and not by journalists or academics who don’t actually have access to the relevant data.
“To me the biggest obvious issue is unplanned pregnancy”
The military has managed to figure out ways to deal with all sorts of things that make its soldiers (temporarily or otherwise) unable to serve. I doubt there’s a reason to think that pregnancy would be any different.
“Perhaps in wartime it might make sense to use truly effective contraception plus mandatory early abortion to make sure that women can function in their assigned jobs for the duration. But those are hard choices that only need to be made in the crunch.”
What you suggest is not only a hard choice, it is an unconstitutional choice. Due Process and Equal Protection analysis focuses on determining fundamental rights owed to Americans. The genesis of the fundamental rights analysis lay in cases where decisions to pro create were challenged. While Roe v. Wade (which has been substantially watered down by Planned Parenthood v. Casey) could potentially be reversed, the idea of mandatory abortion is perhaps the only abortion topic that could simultaneously enrage both pro-life and pro-choice agendas.
Simply put, even if the military wanted “mandatory abortions” the policy would be struck down immediately. I assume you suggest the idea for shock value and with little attention to the actual law.
Matt, we could pass a law that would support mandatory abortion only during extreme national emergencies where the national interest demanded it.
We would then invoke that law only in the case of war desperate enough to justify it.
We would not do so in little wars where performance is not such an issue.
We kill friendly civilians when we absolutely have to, and this would be just another example of that.
In response to: “It isn’t necessarily such a bad thing — the population as a whole is reproducing at below replacement, and if military service gets women in touch with their desire to have children, the advantages to the society might be worth the inconvenience to the military. ”
J Thomas:
Using the military to increase the repopulation rate is an intriguing idea.
Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Perhaps it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man would be required to do prodigious… service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
To Buck:
Your suggestion sounds disturbingly similiar to the match-maker programs of Nazi Germany where SS-ubermensch were paired with the purest of Aryan females.
To J-Thomas:
You are not proposing we pass a law. You are proposing that we amend the constitution. The supreme court’s interpretation of the current constitution is definitive, and the only way to overcome a constitutional decision (without completely destroying the balance of power between the three branches) is to amend the constitution.
The current jurisprudence on the right to pro-create is deeply rooted. The law you propose would have to pass strict scrutiny standard, where the federal government would have to provide a compelling state interest for the policy. You point out that interest, but the court would not find it compelling. The fundamental nature of procreative rights will prevent it. And even if the justices did go off the reservation on that point, they would never subscribe to the idea that mandatory abortion is the least restrictive alternative on preventing pregnacies in the military.
It’s all a moot point anyway. No one wants such a law, and it would be political suicide to suggest it. The ardurous process of amending the constitution precludes any prospect of mandatory abortion.
To Matt:
You need to watch Dr. Strangelove.
Fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face.
Matt, I want to assure you that the Constitution nowhere mentions abortion. You can look it up.
And for that matter soldiers give up various constitutional rights already, during their service. You have brought up a straw man, apart from the politics. And that can be avoided simply by burying the new law into some big bill, perhaps with some flimflam wording. It happens all the time.
Mandatory contraception would of course be the primary defense anyway; contraception in some form that doesn’t require daily compliance.
J-Thomas:
You could fill a large book with the legal issues that are not addressed in the constituion. Actually, such books already exist: they are called Constitutional law casebooks. The entirety of constitutional law deals with interpreting the constituion, a document of only 4,543 words.
Show me in this document where the authority exists for the enactment and expansion of administrative and regulatory state, a veritable “fourth branch” of our government that is arguably more powerful and important to our daily lives than the other three.
My point is that the constitution is vague, and intentionally so constructed by the founders. The phrase “due process of liberty” doesn’t give us much to go on, but it is the task of the judiciary to give substance to vague phrases.
It is true that the constitutional right to abortion is arguable, and rests on grounds that are not explicitly state in the document itself.
To argue that the questionable grounds for the right to abortion implies that there exist constitutional grounds to mandate abortion is non-sensical.
I concede that courts have been more willing to limit constitutional rights in the context of the military. But as I said before, the right to pro-create are some of the most sacred grounds protected by the constitution.
I sense that you do not have legal training. That’s fine, there are too many lawyers anyway. But I can’t forgive the lack of common sense in the political arena. You honestly believe that some legislator sneaking in a mandatory abortion law into omnibus legislation wouldn’t go unnoticed? If it did do so, it would still be struck down for the reasons I’ve set forth. And that is besides the point, because like I’ve already said, the legislator would not dare engage in such a risky move. Pro-Life would say the legislator is murdering unborn children. Pro-choice would say that the legislator is oppressing a woman’s right to choose.
Yes, slipping in legislation into larger bills does happen all the time. But such pork-barrel add on’s comprise new bridges and water treatment plants, not a law that would provoke the ire of perhaps the most well organized special interest groups in America.
Although it’s clear that you think there should be a constitutional right to mandate abortion, that doesn’t make it so. And if you are still not satifisied, eference one of those books filled with things the constitution doesn’t mention for a more eloquent explanation.
Matt, if we get into a serious war, we will win the war first and sort out the constitution later. If we have women in essential positions who cannot take time off for pregnancy, they will not take time off for pregnancy. The details of how that works out will not be fully predictable ahead of time and might not involve reliable contraception or abortion, but I’m certain that the constitutional rights of soldiers during wartime will not be high on the list of concerns.