What do the Catholic Church, the American Civil Liberties Union and the United States Air Force have in common?

Well, 1970 only one of them was "pro-abortion" and it's not the one you might think.

The answer to my question, what did these three entities have in common? Susan R. Struck. Captain Susan R. Struck, that is. And this, is why she matters in our current (on-going) rhetoric surrounding abortion rights in the United States. 

Captain Struck began her service in the United States Air Force on April 8, 1967 as a commissioned officer. She served on active duty until October 16, 1970 when she was recommended for honorable discharge by a duly constituted Board of Officers she was required to appear before after becoming pregnant while serving in Vietnam. 

This Board she appeared in front of was essentially a "pregnancy panel," convened in accordance with the then-statue that allowed the U.S. military to discharge any person (read: woman) who became pregnant while serving. The panel would "decide" if the servicewoman was pregnant and then file for her discharge. 

However you perceive service in our armed forces - a gift, a sacrifice, an act of patriotisms, an act of violence - it is, objectively, a way that hundreds of thousands of Americans have made (and continued to make) their living. 

This means that persons serving in the military have a property interest in their service - that is the legal mumbo jumbo way of saying, people have the right to be paid for the labor and time they give to the military, and that work for the government can't be cut off without process.

  Jumping back to 1970 this is problematic for a few reason, so come on this journey with me:

1. Only female service persons get pregnant. 
2. Only female service persons were getting discharged/fired for being pregnant. 
3. Male counterparts weren't getting discharged/fired for getting someone pregnant while in service.
4. This left women with only 2 options: loose their job, or terminate their pregnancy. 

TIMEOUT: Remember this is 1970, and the landmark decision Roe v. Wade 410 U.S. 113 (1973) hasn't come out yet. This means that abortions are illegal in the United States. TIME-IN!

Are you connecting the dotted lines? Are you getting angry? You should be angry. 

See, although abortions were illegal, they were not illegal when it was "convenient" for the government. They were not illegal, and were in fact regularly performed on military bases. They were illegal for women who had been raped, women living in dangerous domestic violence situations, women living in poverty, women who may die if they carried their pregnancy to term, women who couldn't afford to have another baby, woman who were abandoned, etc... 

We come from a country where our government has a lonnnnnnnnnnng history controlling women's bodies. Our government has a history of forcibly sterilizing women - "undesirable populations" (read: women of color, poor women, prison populations, religious minorities).  

When it came to these panels, our government placed women in a position where they had to choose between their livelihood and a child. A little corrosive... but maybe that's just me.

But back to Captain Struck. Captain Struck was a practicing Roman Catholic and didn't believe in abortion. She wanted to carry her child to term, and give it up for adoption.

Captain Struck loved being a service member and also did not want an abortion. She didn't think she should have to choose. 

So, what's a gal Air Force Captain to do?  Well, the Captain said "not today, Satan," to the Department of Defense and got herself a lawyer. 

Who was her representation you ask? The one, the only, the glorious and notorious, Ruth. Bader. Ginsburg.   Yes, that's right. RBG, the late Supreme Court Justice, who was a then-ACLU attorney working in the women's division.

If RBG had it her way, Struck v. Secretary of Defense would have been the landmark case. We use to talk about abortion and rights. Captain Struck got her day in court "pro-choice" would mean something radically different to our society than it does today. 

So why wasn't it? Well, after being heard by the United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, and as it was waiting to be heard by the Supreme Court, the military realized one BIG THING that the rest of our government seems to have forgotten: telling women what to do with their bodies is never a good idea.

Recognizing the risk of a SCOTUS decision, the military internally changed its policy. Making Captain Struck's claim moot, losing her standing with it the "pro-choice" language-that-could-have-been. 

We are barely a generation removed from circumstances where the "choice" in pro-choice meant the right not to have an abortion. This matters. This is important.

This issue isn't about morality or religion. This is about the government being able to dictate the lives of women and their bodies; women and their families. We have to realize that this fight goes together and goes both ways, and the more we forget that, the farther apart we'll be pushed.