to think that if someone gives birth they are automatically female?

[sashh]

A British soldier has given birth in camp bastion.

Do news presenters have to tell us she is a 'female soldier'.

do soldiers not go through thorough medicals before they get posted on active duty ??

cant be very thorough if it misses a pregnancy

hope mum and baby are doing welll... presumably they will be shipped home very soon

Doncha know that 'female' soldiers aren't 'real' soldiers?

Of course real soldiers are always men! tut tut

I think the writers of these news reports probably start from a viewpoint that everything needs spelling out and explaining properly...to avoid confusion.

And when you think of the different levels of intelligence there are across the Nation, you can sort of understand why.

They were probably trying to avoid a barrage of emails asking how a male soldier could possibly have given birth...because some people may still automatically assume being in the army = being male.

When I was taught to write reports (not news items - just in general) I was always taught to assume the reader knows nothing, just to get all the information into it.

docs dont alway pick up pregnacy,my sil best friend didnt have her pregnacy comfirmed till she had a scan,all tests came back neg,her gp said she wasnt pregnant but something wasnt right,sil went with her to the gp and refused to leave till he sent her for a scan,she was nearly 6 months :/

evidence to the contrary

It was to clarify it for all the people who would have been left scratching their heads trying to work out how a soldier had had a baby.

The woman who gave birth in a tree was in Mozambique

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/662472.stm

"do soldiers not go through thorough medicals before they get posted on active duty ??"

No. None do. There are thorough medicals on joining, then it is up to personnel to report the their medical centre as and when they need to.

The idea that all females should POAS before deployment, but it's always been rejected so far because a) it suggests that females cannot be trusted to declare known pregnancies and b) it doesn't actually remove the possibility of someone deploying in the very early days anyhow. Sticks are readily available on deployment should someone come to suspect she is pregnant whist there. Some 200 have gone back to UK over the years from Afghanistan because they have discovered a pregnancy after deployment.

When I deployed the Doc asked me what type of contraception I was using. I replied abstinence (I was single then). He reeled back from me with an expression of horror. Tutted, and made me POAS. He next saw me at a pre-deployment tea party, where a group of more presentable squaddies were mustered to take tea and cucumber sandwiches with the Duke of Westminster. The doc chose the middle of the tea party to tell me, in carrying tones, that "It's ok, you're not pregnant". That was a conversational stopper!

Mozambique then, not Bangladesh.

Same principle!