Speaking of Babies...

From Newsday:
FORT DRUM, N.Y. -- The Army has court-martialed a 36-year-old 10th Mountain Division soldier for refusing to be vaccinated against anthrax and influenza, Fort Drum officials said Friday.

Pvt. Rhonda Hazley, a wheeled-vehicle mechanic with 514th Maintenance Company, was convicted March 21 by a summary court martial of disobeying the orders of an officer and a noncommissioned officer, said Col. Robert Caslen, the division's chief of staff.

The court martial reduced her three grades in rank to private. She also was ordered to serve 14 days confinement, Caslen said.....

Hazley, of East Dublin, Ga., refused the shot because she is breast-feeding her child, friend Stephanie Ingram told WWTI-TV, a local television station. Hazley joined the Army in April 1999 and was assigned to Fort Drum six months later. ....

Meanwhile, Kamila Iwanowska, a 26-year-old reservist from New York City, also faces a special court martial for refusing to receive the anthrax vaccine, The Watertown Daily Times reported Friday......

Iwanowska, a recently naturalized Polish immigrant, objected because she feared the vaccination could have adverse effects on her reproductive system and her ability to have a baby, her lawyer, Lionel Hector, told The Associated Press.....

The military system is designed from a male perspective. I don't know how I feel about that. The system automatically limits choices that only women need to make. (So, knowing that, when a woman enters the military, should she do so only with the agreement that she turn her choices over to the power of the military?) On the other hand, are there other options for running the military that honors the choices that only women have to make because of their natural biology? If women ran the military, would the system be very different? (My assumption is that we need a military to defend our national boundaries from attack.)