EDITORIAL
Servicewomen should receive medical parity

There was a certain amount of misguided chuckling when the military announced to prospective recruits that they could take advantage of plastic surgery by military doctors if they signed up.

Join the Army, see the world and get breast implants or liposuction along the way.

And really, our military doctors are too busy to be used as a recruiting tool offering cosmetic surgery.

But there is a serious side to this offer. Military surgeons need practice, including in plastic surgery, which is often required after battlefield injuries.

And even non-combat plastic surgery is often not so much about vanity as it is about dealing with serious and lingering medical problems.

So, we can accept that there is a place for plastic surgery, even peacetime plastic surgery, in military hospitals. It is nothing more than another way of saying that the military will take care of you, from healthcare to housing.

What is outrageous, however, is the military's general refusal to offer another medical procedure that is widely and readily available in the civilian world: abortion. Under today's rules, the military will not pay for an abortion unless the woman's life is in danger. And at that, it will be decided by individual military doctors on a case-by-case basis.

This isn't simply a case of the federal government getting itself out of the abortion business. Poor women on Medicaid can obtain abortions not only if their life is threatened and but also in the case of rape, incest or other extreme situations.

Not so within the armed services.

California Sen. Barbara Boxer has proposed giving women in uniform the same rights as Medicaid patients. That seems to be particularly important in the case of women stationed abroad, where even if they wished to go to a private doctor, the service would likely be unavailable.