UK women soldiers told to carry condoms

A campaign has been launched by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) asking female soldiers to carry condoms, Daily Mail reported on Sunday. An advertisement in the army’s official magazine said that “on deployment, there’ll be 50 blokes to each woman” and it urged women soldiers to use a condom or “face something you really don’t want to hear”.

Although military personnel are banned from having sex in a war zone, commanders turn a blind eye if a sexual relationship is between soldiers of a similar rank and doesn’t impact operations. If a female soldiers falls pregnant, she is flown back home as rules bar expectant mothers from frontline service.

Between January 2003 and February 2009, at least 102 British women soldiers in Iraq were sent home after it was found they were to become mothers. For the same period, the number of female soldiers who fell pregnant in Afghanistan was 31.