Mothers in the Line of Fire
Women in Combat Is a Pro-life Matter of Moral Theology
by Andrew A. Sicree
The state of Arizona renamed a mountain and a highway for her. The US Army awarded her the Purple Heart and promoted her posthumously. But what became of the children of Lori Ann Piestewa?
On March 23, 2003, Army Pfc. Piestewa of the 507th Maintenance Company, out of Fort Bliss, Texas, was traveling in a military convoy that got lost and wandered into an ambush near Nasiriyah, Iraq. Piestewa, injured in the attack and captured, died in captivity shortly thereafter. The first female American soldier to die in the war, she, as a Hopi, was also the first Native American woman to die in combat while serving in the US military. The drama surrounding the capture and rescue of her fellow soldier, Jessica Lynch, overshadowed Piestewa’s capture and death. Forgotten is the fact that Piestewa left behind a four-year-old son and three-year-old daughter.
One Hundred Women
In the past two decades, a revolution in American military affairs has taken place. With little debate in Congress and little notice by the electorate, the placement of women in combat roles within our armed forces has progressed steadily. Already, women in the Air Force fly combat missions. But for every female pilot, there are hundreds of women who stand watch, disarm bombs, or drive Humvees in Army convoys. Although not classified as “combat” positions by the military, these tasks place women in the line of fire. The moral question of placing women in combat applies to all women who serve in positions that make them legitimate military targets, even if they are not engaged in actual combat.
Between September 11, 2001, and November 2009, more than one hundred women died while serving in the US armed forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. One female soldier died in the arms of her husband . Staff Sgt. Kimberley Voelz, mortally wounded by the explosion of an improvised explosive device (IED) she was disarming, died as she was held by her husband, who was also a soldier stationed nearby.
One-third of the deaths of female soldiers were attributed to non-hostile causes: accidents or illnesses. Two-thirds were the result of enemy actions. At least twelve of these women soldiers were mothers of one or more children 18 years old or younger.
A few organizations, such as the Center for Military Readiness (CMR), question the wisdom of policies that place women in or near combat areas. The CMR points out that policy changes putting women in harm’s way have been made without Congressional debate or authorization.
But while political debate has been minimal, there has been even less discussion of the morality of allowing or requiring women to fight. I propose that it can be reasonably demonstrated, using arguments derived from Catholic doctrines, that not only is it immoral to conscript women of child-bearing age, but it is also immoral to permit them to volunteer to serve in combat positions, except in strictly defensive situations such as might be found in “home front” scenarios wherein there is no longer any safe place to retreat.
In spite of the best efforts of modern America to make it otherwise, there remain deep, fundamental differences between men and women. Rooted in biology, these differences cannot really be removed. They can be minimized, denigrated, distorted, or ignored, but the fact remains that it is not men but women who carry pre-born children within their wombs.
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more from the online archives
29.1—Jan/Feb 2016
on Marriage, Moral Corruption & the Christian Duty of Witness by Regis Nicoll
32.6—November/December 2019
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