Justice for Women Veterans

As we all know, being a victim of sexual assault is completely unnecessary and awful for anyone to have to go through. But, it almost seems worse to think about women in the military, just trying to help our country, to have to go through it. The author of the editorial, Andrew Rosenthal, agrees with me. Many servicewomen and veterans have a hard time trying to obtain health benefits related to the sexual violence they experienced while in the military. This is a huge problem, and is definitely not fair. Women in the military are already having a hard enough time emotionally dealing with the stress, and them having to worry about sexual assault and harassment is not acceptable. If they unfortunately do have to go through this, they should at least get health care benefits after they've served for our country. Don't you think?

Andrew Rosenthal supports his opinion with evidence from Veterans Benefits Administration and The Service Women's Action Network. One point that Rosenthal made was that the "Veterans Benefits Administration approves 53 percent of all claims related to post-traumatic stress disorder, it accepts far fewer claims - only 32 percent -  when the P.T.S.D. is related to sexual trauma." This statement makes me think that Rosenthal does not think that this is acceptable. Rosenthal also mentions that The Service Women's Action Network sued the the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs under the Freedom of Information Act. Rosenthal states that women can be "traumatized" by the "hostility of the bureaucracy that is supposed to help them." Although Rosenthal believes this is a major problem in today's society, he still has hope. He says, "Making it easier for those suffering from sexual trauma to receive benefits is one step toward fairness."


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