US Navy Has A Pregnancy Problem
It seems the Obama administration has been going out of its way to understate the ramifications of pushing more and more women into deployments.
A record 16 out of 100 Navy women are reassigned from ships to shore duty due to pregnancy, according to data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group.
I have been saying for years that “Fan Rooms” aboard ship are responsible for way too much sexual activity while underway. Having personally flushed a gallon or two of salt water down the shitter at sea…I knew what was cumming long ago. Back in 1991 Fan Rooms were a problem. Back then people seemed concerned when 10% of the WAVEs aboard one ship returned from deployment pregnant.
For those of you that have never had the honor of riding a Wave, let me just say I did my best to make up for your absence. Life at sea can be monotonous but it hardly fosters monogamy. Sitting in the Old Goats Locker aboard the USS Shreveport a wise old Senior Chief told the following tale about Sailors who had to face disaster:
A ship with 30 sailors and one woman strands on a desert island. After one month the woman says: “I can not proceed in this way.” And she suicides herself. After another month, the sailors say: “We can not proceed in this way.” And they bury the woman. The next month, the sailors say: “We can not proceed in this way.” And they dig up the woman.
Hey, I just heard the story I didn’t come up with it…those poor bastards.
The evacuation of pregnant women is costly for the Navy. Jude Eden, a nationally known author about women in the military who served in 2004 as a Marine deployed to Iraq said a single transfer can cost the Navy up to $30,000 for each woman trained for a specific task, then evacuated from an active duty ship and sent to land. That figure translates into $115 million in expenses for 2016 alone.
Seems to me that doing away with Fan Rooms would save the Navy a boat load of money. But what do I know? There is probably nothing wrong with setting condition Zebra aboard ship when you need to make a hole in the ladder well. I am sure having 30-50 pregnant women milling about has no adverse impact on operational proficiency.
Category: Politics
The “cost” accounting above also doesn’t seem to take into account the duties of the pregnant sailor that will now be foisted onto other sailors who are either male or can keep their knees together on a deployment.
Question: Presuming that the Navy does some kind of pre-deployment medical screening for sailors that includes a pregnancy test (which I’m pretty sure the other services do), do these pregnant sailors face any discipline for the additional burden they’ve placed on the Navy for their actions?
All Hands Man Your Battle Stations!
Well, I’ve never served in the Navy, but I did once stay at a Holiday Inn Express, and I can tell you one thing about pregnancy:
They know what causes it now.
Okay, but I blame all of this on Dave Hardin, because MARINES!!!!!
HEY!!!! Let’s all play nice! We don’t make any Squid Jokes! 🙂
But isn’t that because Marines can’t spell squid?
Hey kids! I’ll just leave this here. ‘Sailor accused of deserting post after having baby’ http://www.13newsnow.com/news/military/sailor-accused-of-deserting-post-after-having-baby/413956353 ‘FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) – A 24-year-old U.S. Navy sailor who had a baby in August was arrested and remains on a military hold after being accused of deserting her post, court records show. Ana Lucia Gnecco was arrested Wednesday at her parents’ home in Hollywood, Florida, after failing to report on Jan. 14 to her base in Portsmouth, Virginia, where she is a seaman quartermaster and worked in the reception and medical support at the Naval Medical Center. Her father, Armando Rodriguez, told the SunSentinel he didn’t know she left the Navy earlier that she should have. “She basically went AWOL; that’s what the Navy is claiming,” he told the newspaper. The arrest was the last resort, said Christina Johnson, a Navy public affairs officer for the medical center. “She was in contact with her command and with the Navy’s arm that would bring her back to duty. All efforts were made to get her back to work, but she chose to stay there.” When someone misses a return day by 30 days, “it’s considered desertion,” Johnson said. She said she couldn’t comment further and didn’t know what discipline Gnecco might face. Gnecco’s father said the baby could be a reason his daughter didn’t return to the post. “We could assume that having a baby might not go well with serving in the military.” Rodriguez is hoping the Navy will discharge her. “I hope that she goes back up there and they have a hearing and she is released,” he said. “There is no point in keeping her.” Rodriguez said that he and the rest of the family – including sisters and her mother – have helped with the baby. The child’s father also lives in Broward County. Gnecco had a more immediate problem on Thursday when she appeared before Broward County Judge Michael Davis for a bond hearing. She said she’s breastfeeding her daughter and needed a breast pump. She said she had spoken with a doctor at the jail and was… Read more »
Well, this dumb broad could have applied for time off under the FMLA, which is well-explained at this link, and yes, it was expanded to include military people, and yes, it does cover maternity leave. All she had to do was request the time off.
http://ingearcareer.org/legislation-you-need-to-know-about-military-spouse-provisions-of-the-fmla/
Yep, sometimes they are so lazy they don’t want to fill out one form and sign it to request something like authorized time off. No sympathy.
She could have. But she didn’t. What a waste of tax dollars.
http://www.duffelblog.com/amp/2013/06/opinion-seriously-you-two-get-a-room/
Things happen when you put Women and Seamen together!
badum-tish!
This in my opinion is human nature thing. In my experience, put a man and woman together in close quarters all day, eventually they’re gonna knock boots…
Really? What if she can’t stand him and he won’t leave her alone?
Then what her boots should knock is not his boots but somewhat higher up the chain of command.
haha i accidentally hit the report comment instead of the reply button, my bad….
I mean obviously if one or the other is a scumbag yeah but seriously, it happens alllllll the time.
Well, it is easier when its just one on one to resist if there isn’t a connection. When there are 10 females and 400 males on a ship, well, those 10 females are going to end up finding someone they will connect with. Some of them will find MANY someones to connect with.
You are correct. And as always, PH2 pretends human nature doesn’t exist. Because sisterhood.
Bullshit. Human nature is male animals have a higher sex drive than female animals, in all species. What YOU fail to recognize is that females of all species are, and should be, picky about their partners, despite their economic circumstances. You are, as usual, full of hot air, tootsie.
Muhhahahahahaha, you called him tootsie, muhahahahaha.
Okay, how about braindead and dickless, instead?
“I am sure having 30-50 pregnant women milling about has no adverse impact on operational proficiency.”
They should make a rule that enemies can fire on ships that have pregnant sailors on board.
Otherwise it proves that President Trump is a misogynist.
/sarc
* can’t
I didn’t know the Navy made women wear a white burkha.
Maternity tops have been available at Clothing & Small Stores for a while now.
Aw come on. Don’t mess with her joke by explaining it Ex! That was pretty funny.
Of course if you use this as yet ANOTHER reason to not have women in subs or combat units then you are an asshole! I’m a Marine in middle management and I can attest that it was so much easier working in all male units than in mixed gender ones. I am not suggesting woman can’t serve as in my experience I have served with a great many awesome female Marines and sailors. I do know, however, that it some cases, it’s best to just not have the distraction of females. (Another thought that makes me an asshole.) And if people don’t think women aren’t a “distraction” to 18-24 year old males, then you haven’t been around much.
I can only speak from personal experience. I deployed twice. The first was a small detachment, no females. Correspondingly, no drama. The second had a handful of females amongst 90 or so males, and there was drama galore, particularly surrounding the two young women who were attached to our detachment for admin and thus hung around the barracks all day (where their “office” was) in PT gear. More than a few fights in the ranks over who was whose boyfriend, who was flirting with whose girlfriend, etc. While these two could have eased the situation by being more professional like the other females, I don’t really blame them. They were teenaged girls doing what teenaged girls do, and expecting them to do otherwise was foolhardy.
“They were teenaged girls doing what teenaged girls do, and expecting them to do otherwise was foolhardy.”
Indeed. But for some inexplicable reason, you can’t seem to bring that sort of dynamic up when you talk about females in combat or otherwise all male units. Of course the reason for the caterwauling of the media when people mention that sort of thing is self evident – it’s a good argument.
The best “combat is no place for women” argument I ever heard was the late, great General Barrow’s testimony in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Just Google “General Barrow SASC testimony”. Good stuff delivered in that easy to listen to southern gentlemen’s drawl.
See, I wouldn’t put up with that crap from anyone. ‘Teenagers’ is hardly an excuse for it. I worked with WOMEN who were 18 and were more mature than some of the 30-year-olds I see now. It has more to do with lack of maturity than anything else. Girls squabbling over a boy can be separated – yes, they can – and told to straighten up or expect to be reassigned to something unpleasant ASAP.
I’d bet that a good portion of females having sex while underway are 21 or older, including a good percentage of the ones who ended up pregnant.
Age has zero to do with it. Especially when, according to scientists and doctors, women hit their sexual peak at 35ish. Putting males and females in a high stress situation for a lengthy amount of time will cause sexual tension to build, regardless.
I also know that there were troops on my FOB in Afghanistan (about 6 females and 100 males living there) getting their freak on, but nobody got pregnant and they were discreet about it and didn’t let it become a distractor. Same as when I was an instructor. If it didn’t become a distractor (includes pregnancy), then I didn’t care. But, there were also males and females who didn’t indulge their urges which was much easier.
I wonder if the “adults” who run those organizations would put their young daughters(or even sons, given the possible legal consequences) in the same situations in the civilian world.
A coed unchaperoned pajama party/sleepover with access to alcohol. At an age where Viagra has a very small market.
So, what’s the NSN and noun nomenclature for a
Navy raincoat?
Nomenclature: Prevention, 18 years of paying for it.
NSN: 6515-01-020-0032 – Condom
There are apparently multiple NSNs. That one’s for Trojans in boxes of 12. (smile)
That page is a hoot.
Handling? Hazards?
Hondo you’re like the Library of Congress, you know everything.
Are the Corpsmen hoarding all the condoms or are navy chicks on a cream pie diet?
😂
Parents were the worst sailors. I get some of it–I can’t PT, better get preggers, or I don’t want to deploy, better get preggers, but it was the day-to-day, non-deployed skating that really killed my morale. “I can’t do that watch because I have my kids that week,” “I can’t stay late, I have to pick my kids up from daycare,” “my kid’s sick so I have to watch them.” Good for your kids fucknob, thanks for constantly shitting on everybody else. Even the real shitbags were sometimes more reliable than that bunch–at least they showed up.
Not that I’m still bitter.
I tried so hard to keep family and Army separate…and it was easy because I made it easy by making the right arrangements in life.
Too many leaders allow these excuses to work.
Skating? You think that’s something new? You try trading watches for some whiny guy who says he wants to spend Christmas with his family, and then when he actually has to stand your watch he said he’d fill in, he weasels out of it and you still have to stand that watch, because he’s a skate AND he didn’t bother to tell you he was a short-timer.
I hear you, Ex-PH. I learned that “lesson on my first ship as an E-3. I wouldn’t bring my wife and baby daughter to Norfolk in ’72 because under the rules at the time we didn’t qualify for military housing.
That gave me the “free time” to either take someone’s watch or duty day for some extra pocket change. Or, just swap out duty days. I got burned once on a swap. After that, they paid me, and once they took my duty, then I gave them their money back
When I was at Bragg guys were paying others to do their staff duty for them. But, we got a new 1SG and she put an end to that PDQ because it was screwing up schedules and training for others who took his duty every single time.
One Thanksgiving weekend I ended up doing 24hr staff duty shifts twice because my boss called me with an emergency and said I needed to come in. (I didn’t answer the phone, he left an ‘its an emergency!’ message on my phone.) His kid was sick. And it wasn’t even the ‘good’ days either. I did the first day of the long weekend and the Saturday through Sunday morning, so my entire weekend was screwed and I was back at work Monday.
For every time that I established details (DA6 FTW!) for my troops, I told them no trading unless I approve it and you need to justify it to me. It helped immensely prevent bullshit and if there was a swap, that little fuck-weasel is going to do his part, no exceptions. But then, not every leader puts that rule into effect right up front.
When I was at Bragg I took Christmas Exodus leave every year. Only because, those who didn’t got Staff Duty multiple times that two weeks and it was a 24 hour shift every time. Once or twice someone had to stay at the staff duty desk for 2-3 days straight because everyone else learned very quickly. However, after leaving there and not having the threat of xmas staff duty, I stopped taking leave during christmas and told everyone else to so they could spend the time with their families. Though, getting a day on day off schedule during christmas wasn’t so bad, which was another reason I did it. I will say that I hated when personnel brought their kids to work because they were sick. Onpost day care send kids home if they are sick, no exceptions. I got sick so often from other people’s damn sick kids it was ridiculous. But yes, there were plenty of times where I saw some: hey I can’t be at work tomorrow, my kid is having surgery, sick, getting a haircut, taking a nap, etc., which wasn’t too bad, but it did happen at least once a week with someone on the staff. I had a boss at one point who had no problem with people leaving for family issues, but when I would say, “Sir, I have to head out early because I need to meet the maintenance guy to fix my water heater” I’d get a strange look and a “can’t he get into your place without you there?” I even had a 1SG once who I said a week out to, “1SG I need a day off next Friday. If I have to I’ll take leave, but I have a bunch of errands to run and that’s the only day I can do it.” “Ohhh, don’t worry about it, just take the day off.” An hour later, “you know what? I can’t just give you the day off, so just come in for formation and then you can leave so you’re accounted for.” Two days later, “hey, if you… Read more »
They fuck you in the drive-thru every time.
Fuck yeah they do.
ALWAYS walk inside to the counter! Always!
They used to let us take ‘special liberty’, which was a day off that didn’t count against annual leave usage. I found a bunch of those request chits in an envelope. I never said what I was going to do or why I wanted it, just ‘special liberty’ on a Friday or a Monday, and as long as it wasn’t my watch section (we had six of them), I was gone.
I just figured ‘get it in writing’ was a standard thing to do. You gotta get it in writing and don’t answer the phone.
Yeah. I learned to start driving up to Raleigh for the weekend and back then I didn’t have a pager or a cell phone. So if I came home to a message on Sunday night, I’d just tell my boss in the morning “Sorry I was in Raleigh all weekend, wanna see pictures and receipts?” and they couldn’t really do anything about it.
We had regular passes (1-4 days), but for a while we had a 1SG who was weak and always checked with the battalion CSM about passes. The officers in my unit were always taking passes so us NCOs got punished because they took so many. “1SG, then why not tell them to stop taking a 4-day pass every weekend? Why prevent us from taking a 4-day that we get once every 3 months when a cycle graduates?” “Well, I can’t let you have one because the CSM is upset at me about passes.” “Yeah 1SG because you’re letting the officers take off every damn weekend. We request one after every 12 week cycle!”
Recall this mindset being known as “my wife she…”
“my kids they…”
Ok Dave, I will be the dumb Army guy who asks: WTF is a fan room?
NO kidding these fancy services with their dining halls and facilities and such…goat lockers….lots of little rooms for all manner of activities…grunts just had the great outdoors and we prefer it that way.
Glad I’m not the only one who doesn’t know.
Also from the NYT article:The Navy has strict rules against sexual relationships between men and women while on duty or between commissioned officers and enlisted personnel, but Commander Smallwood said there was no evidence any such regulations were broken.
36 women pregnant and there’s no evidence? It wasn’t like it was swallowed!
Also Smallwood?
It’s better than that. It’s “COMMANDER Smallwood.”
I’m trying to picture a bunch of sailors standing in formation at a Change of Command ceremony (I’m assuming they do those in the Navy, too) and biting holes through their lips to keep from bursting out laughing as they are introduced to their new CO, “Commander Smallwood.”
I’ll bet it was like that scene in “Life of Brian” with Pontius Pilate talking to the Roman soliders about his friend Biggus Dickus.
For reference.
That clip’s freaking hilarious. And if you’ve already seen the movie, if possible it’s even funnier in German. (smile)
And some day he’ll get promoted to CAPTAIN Smallwood!
He might even become Rear Admiral Smallwood, lower(is)half
I almost feel bad for the guy….
Once upon a time, I knew a “Major Crummey”. He told us “Can you imagine being Lieutennat Crummey”?
Heh, heh. You said “Smallwood.” Heh.
Dude, he’s the skipper of the heavy cruiser USS Beavis and Butthead…
Undoubtedly on of the crewmen is Seaman Staines.
I lost count of the amount of Private Semen we had come through my unit at Bragg. One was even Private Semens.
My basic training company had a PVT Hardick. The drills always called him soft Peter.
It’s where air conditioning blowers are located throughout the ship, to provide ventilation to below deck spaces.
We have voids too…
Ahhh… Literally “fans”. Got it. I thought it was an acronym and was breaking my brain trying to come up with an answer. As usual… the simplest explanation is usually the right one.
We called them “Hangover Havens”, you could skate all day.
I figured it might be a room where you have contractors who fan you with palm leafs while you eat grapes and watch big screen TVs, but then I realized this was about the Navy not the Air Force. So then I thought it was Enlisted who were fanning the Officers since they also serve them meals?
Thanks for the clarifications though.
Life on ship is lacking privacy. In the Gator Navy it is particularly bad. Gator ships are those that transport Marines. It is common to have 30 Marines packed into a very small space. Imagine the average room in a barracks these days with more than a dozen people living in it.
As days turn into weeks and then months people try to find places on ship to go and be alone. Fan rooms are small rooms that pump air throughout the ship. Usually enough room in them to sit by yourself for a while, or someone you dont mind being very close to.
Its common to go days or even weeks without seeing daylight. People are stacked in bunks 4 and 5 high everywhere.
Gator ships pack people into them in much tighter spaces than normal Navy ships. When Marines spend months on end packed together like that and finally get to go ashore…they generally fight or fuck the fist thing they see.
Except me of course…I was always cool, calm and collected.
One of the things that convinced me that I would be happier in the Army than the Navy was getting a tour of the USS Forrestal and getting a closeup look at one of the berthing compartments. Another was that, being a pessimist, I considered that I could walk a lot longer than I could swim.
Like the troop ships of WWII, then.
So Wave Reynar wasn’t the only Sailor with (sticky) buns in the oven?
Women should be forced to have Norplant or another birth control injected if they want to serve in forward units or on ships of any type
I remember my first shipboard cruise as an EOD Tech. We had an O-4 Champlain who was one of the best, down-to-earth Champlain I’d ever met at that point in my career. Usually a happy go lucky type, I saw him one day leaning over the gun’l with a sad, long face.
I went over to make small talk with him. The next morning he was to catch a hell over to another ship to “counsel” a female. When I questioned him further he said she was preggers. Okay, I said. Why does that have you down in the dumps.
She’s married, he replies. Again, okay, I said. He replied, she’s three months along and we’ve been on deployment for almost five months. Sorry Chap, I said. Hope you get to feeling better. But, what the hell. It ain’t your fault is it?
He started laughing at that. Made my day to lift his spirits somewhat.
Dammit….helicopter
Did you mean Chaplain? lol.
I thought he was catching hell on Lake Champlain. Great story, though
It should be simple. They are told if they get pregnant while under way, they are going to get pummeled by UCMJ, same as whoever they had sex with. It doesn’t take going on Maury’s show to do a DNA test and find out who the father is. (Though those males should be getting written consent so they don’t get called rapists by females who don’t want to get punished, which WILL happen because its happened before.)
They can’t complain about it being sexist if both the mother and father are punished for it. Especially with the amount of money wasted because they can’t keep from banging.
As I recall, when we got to Bosnia, the unit we replaced sent home half their females because they got pregnant. General Order #1 was in place, but they didn’t even article 15 them for getting pregnant or getting a female pregnant.
They can’t complain if they aren’t putting the screws to the ones who get pregnant or get someone pregnant while underway. (No pun intended)
I was around 18-30 year old females for 4 years, 12 weeks at a time and not once did I do anything inappropriate because I knew I’d go to prison for that shit. I didn’t want to spend 20 at Leavenworth because my dick was making decisions and I kept to it.
Simple mitigation technique, we’re going to take rank, money, and potentially kick you out of the military if you break this rule. (Good luck getting the VA to pay for your pregnancy by trying to call it ‘service-related’.)
Ahh good old fan rooms… those are famous on the merchant marine training ships for two things; screwing and people messing up the balances in the A/C ducting… probably while screwing.
LOL, oddly we used to hang the Hog Board just outside of one.
Pictures would disappear for a while but nobody complained unless they did not re-appear.
Not that I ever put my girlfriend/wife/wife’s girlfriends on the hog board of course.
I’m was an Army MP. We had females. In Iraq, they didn’t man the 50 cals. And several were sent home pregnant. Men and women, for the most part, should not serve together. I used to debate this with Ex PH2. Apparently having a vagina in the military means you can have it all. Solid middle class living, time to care for you illegitimate babies, and surrounded by guys who want to bang you. Not ideal for national security.
Still thinking with your dick, huh? Well, that does explain why you and your buddies got all wigged out a freaked when Playgirl magazine first arrived on the scene. All those photos of nekkid men, dicks and nuts plainly visible – man, that was SO threatening to EVERY FUCKING ONE OF YOU INSECURE ASSHOLES WHO SAID “OK FOR ME BUT NOT FOR THEE”.
Shove it. Sit on it and rotate, asshole. You just don’t like women. Period. How many times this week have you punched your wife? Or did she finally have the good sense to leave your sorry ass?
BLUF: It is time to end the disastrous coed command policy and return to gender separate commands. I served five years on board an East Coast aircraft carrier, with my time ending in the 2000s; during this time I deployed to the Mediterranean thrice. I was a deck seaman, and by the time of my departure I advanced to the rank of second class petty officer. While my service is substantially different from that of the Marine- I honestly take my hat off to him and cheer him- I can directly attest to the dire (and very real) impacts of social engineering on the military at the division level, meaning at highly localized levels. By the time I arrived for duty, the policy of co-ed commands, especially with women serving with men aboard the “flat tops”, had been in effect since 1994. No doubt, the brass of our chain of command, both on board the ship and in Washington DC, lauded this program as a stunning success story of gender inclusion. However, this is what I directly observed: * Sexual encounters on board the ship in berthings and other darkened spaces (both in port, out to sea, and on deployment). And, on the third deployment, the captain did NOT hold these sailors, both men and women, accountable. The Love Boat was tolerated and tacitly encouraged. * Within a year of our second deployment, I personally knew over 30 female sailors who left our ship due to pregnancies. Over 30 SAILORS possessing a variety of skills that then had to be urgently replaced, right before a major deployment. Our division lost six (6) females within SIX MONTHS of the second deployment. Another left two days prior, and one was flown off the ship one (1) week later. And the thing is, there are no repercussions for skipping out on deployments for these sailors. No Page 13s, nothing- they get to avoid sea duty for up to a year. Is that acceptable? Is that a Fleet we want and deserve as a nation? * Unequal physical and body standards between men and… Read more »
That’s the biggest load of prejudiced crap I’ve run into in a long time. So women stationed ashore should NOT be working at the same bases as men? Build separate bases?
Then explain how it worked so well during World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, shitstick. Explain how pregnancy rates didn’t skyrocket back then. Explain how it doesn’t happen in the civilian corporate world, you moron.
You are a colossally ignorant ass.