The question of whether women should be allowed in military combat is one that must be answered based on the consequences of that choice rather than on some enduring principle of ethics or moral imperative. The potential and actual consequences of allowing women in military combat include adverse impact to the American family, adverse impact to the population, potential loss of lives, and potential loss of battles and whole wars. The impact to the family is centered in the fact that women in combat cannot breastfeed, nurture, or raise their children. Unless, as is rarely the case, the father is able to stay home and raise the children every day, this means that the children become daycare and latchkey children rather than having a close-knit family life. Babies are especially affected because they cannot be breastfed without their mother being available, and the loss of maternal contact in their formative months and years is not replaceable later. Schlafly (1991) states, "Pregnancy and motherhood are simply not compatible with military service" and asserts, "It is wrong to pretend that a woman who is pregnant or has a baby is ready to ship out to fight a war." Moreover, she points out that "the American people watched in amazement when they saw press photos of nursing mothers of six-, 10-, and 12-week-old babies...being shipped out to the Persian Gulf War" (Schlafly, 1991).
The potential adverse impact on the population is obvious; the loss of women in combat means the loss of reproductive potential on the home front. While men produce millions of sperm at a time, and it is possible to freeze some of those and keep them viable, women produce only the number of eggs they are born with, and only about 375 ever develop fully ("How many eggs does a woman's body produce?" 2009). Moreover, although men provide sperm, only women can bring a fetus to full term and deliver it; even test-tube babies must be implanted i<...