Women Serving in the Gulf War

Mary Kenny, the author of the column “Mothers of Babies, Not Battles,” (Commentary, Feb. 20) needs to remove her personal response to being a warrior and try to understand why women have enlisted in our military service. She found it reprehensible that a mother would not only be called off to battle but follow through on those orders. Nowhere in her article did she ask why a woman would choose to be in the military or be a police officer or any high-risk occupation. Those are personal decisions that are made by the individual that are balanced by one’s beliefs, convictions, desires, aspirations and skills. To prevent women from performing any job because the public feels uncomfortable about them holding that position is purely sexist.

Kenny seemed to feel that the loss of a father is less important than the loss of a mother. Death is death and family is family.

She also felt that having women as soldiers is betraying a “chivalric ideal that women and children should be protected by the more brutish male.” Unfortunately, that ideal is a myth. In our society women are not protected by men, they are brutalized by men. The statistics are shocking. Every 15 seconds a woman is beaten, every six minutes a woman is raped and every six hours a woman is killed by her husband or lover. The single largest cause of injury to women in the U.S. is domestic violence. The truly sad social commentary is that the women serving in the Gulf are safer than many women in the U.S. in their homes with their husbands.

LINDA C. McCABE

Woodland Hills