A major reason why the Equal Rights Amendment went down to defeat was the “Draft Our Daughters” issue — whether Selective Service should register young women for a possible future draft on the same basis as men.
ERA was never ratified, but members of the Senate Armed Services Committee repeatedly have tried to impose Selective Service obligations on young women, usually with surprise “Draft Our Daughters” legislation sprung behind closed doors. Now comes a new version, and it still is unacceptable.
In June, the House passed its version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2025. The House defense bill included an innocuous-sounding provision to make Selective Service registration of draft-age men, 18-26, automatic.
Then SASC Chairman Jack Reed (D-RI) sponsored NDAA legislation mandating automatic registration of not just men, but all persons of draft age living in the United States and subject to Selective Service law. (Report on S. 4638, Sec. 598-598D)
Chairman Reed apparently “sweetened” the anti-women “Draft Our Daughters” proposal with a trade-off to gain more votes. Sec. 529B of the SASC bill purports to exempt female draftees from being “compelled to join combat roles that were closed to women prior to Dec. 3, 2015 . . .”
This “combat carve-out” was a false promise that should not have fooled anyone, but three Republican Senators, Dan Sullivan (AK), Tommy Tuberville (AL), and Markwayne Mullin (OK) apparently bought it anyway. (Requests for explanations produced none.)
The Senate Committee approved “Draft Our Daughters,” with its bogus combat carve-out, by a vote of 16-9. Negotiations will consolidate the House and Senate bills behind closed doors, and final votes will come after September 9. Even if Republicans win in November, anything could happen in the lame-duck session.
A Combat Carve-Out is Bogus
Direct ground combat units, such as the infantry, attack the enemy with deliberate offensive action. If Congress wants to exempt women from direct ground combat assignments, they should do so across the board instead of pretending to do so in a ruse involving Selective Service registration.
The “Draft Our Daughters” legislation’s reference to December 3, 2015, marks the unfortunate day when Obama Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter denied Marine Gen. Joe Dunford’s formal request that some direct ground combat occupations and units remain all-male.
The former Commandant’s request was backed by three years of scientific field test research, which confirmed major sex-related differences in the physical strength, speed, and endurance of male and female Marines performing tasks that simulated close combat requirements.
According to the Research Summary of the Marines’ field tests, units composed of average-ability men outperformed mixed-sex teams with highly qualified women in 69% of evaluated tasks, including hiking under load and typical combat maneuvers.
Secretary Carter disregarded the evidence and opted for what is now called “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Pentagon leaders solemnly promised that “gender-neutral” standards would be identical for men and women in the formerly all-male combat positions.
In 2018 the Army announced a six-event Army Combat Fitness Test to replace the Army Physical Fitness Test. The previous APFT had been gender-normed to accommodate physical differences between male and female trainees.
Reality set in when initial ACFT combat fitness trials reported an 84% failure rate among female trainees, compared to 30% among the men.
Several adjustments in test requirements improved women’s scores somewhat, but the Army abandoned promises to make the ACFT sex-neutral in March 2022. RAND data showed that only 52% of the women could pass the test, compared to 92% of the men.
Army policies still pretend that men and women are interchangeable in all ground combat occupational specialties, including physically demanding infantry and Special Forces. Officials keep “adjusting” and “gender-norming” training requirements to accommodate physical differences, simultaneously claiming that standards are the same and nothing has changed.
Pentagon leaders who cannot define what a woman is cannot be trusted to define what “combat” is.
The NDAA combat carve-out ploy does not protect women. Women forced to join the military in a time of national emergency would have to serve where they are ordered to go — just like the men.
The Purpose of Selective Service
The idea that women must register and could be drafted but excused from close combat is oxymoronic, since the whole purpose of a military draft is to rapidly supply combat replacements in a war that threatens the very existence of the United States.
If “Draft Our Daughters” becomes law, any future Selective Service call-up would be governed by “equity” mandates. Drafting equal numbers of men and women just to find the one woman in four who might meet physical requirements would increase administrative demands and jam the system at the worst possible time.
Some exceptional women may be able to meet minimal combat arms standards, but extensive research has shown that most women cannot while most men can. Unrealistic policies ordering all draft-age women to register would not be “fair” for anyone or in America’s national security interests.
Right now, however, Selective Service is a low-cost insurance policy ($26 million per year) to back up the all-volunteer force. It does not exist to advance “sex equity.”
So what is going on here? For many years, Big Government advocates have wanted to change the purpose of Selective Service without any serious, open debate, much less public demand.
The 2020 Report of the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service called for inclusion of women in Selective Service for the lamest of reasons: “the time is right.” This vacuous, unsupported recommendation ignored inconvenient facts that did not support the Commission’s pre-conceived social agenda.
The National Commission’s report strongly promoted an interagency Council on Military, National & Public Service, lumping together military conscription and mandatory “national service,” as if young people could avoid the former by accepting the latter.
Once Americans become accustomed to automatic registration, this powerful agency would coordinate national service mandates.
This Big Government bureaucracy likely would use both “carrots and sticks” to commandeer the lives of young “national servants” for politically correct reasons of the government’s choice.
A major question remains unanswered: Where in the U.S. Constitution is there authorization for the federal government to run the lives of young people for less than compelling reasons?
The Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of conscription for military service, primarily because Art. 1, Sec. 8 of the U.S. Constitution authorizes Congress to raise armies. The Constitution does not empower Congress to conscript anyone for causes like the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, the “Do Good Institute,” or any other government-approved organization.
If Big Government is empowered to control young peoples’ lives for reasons other than military national defense, should our sons and daughters be drafted to serve in a “People for the Planet Corps” charged to monitor Americans’ use of gas stoves and lawn mowers?
Since Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has designated “climate change” as a primary concern of the DoD, such a prospect is not far-fetched.
Requiring all 18-year-olds to involuntarily serve in any capacity ignores the guarantees of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that serve as bedrock principles for our republic.
Congress should not replace Americans’ Presumption of Freedom under our Constitution with a Presumption of Service tracked by the government in a system smacking of “social credits.”
Americans Oppose Drafting Girls
Women have always volunteered to serve in times of national emergency, and it is an affront to suggest they would not do so again. Opportunities are wide-open for women in the all-volunteer force, and capable, brave women have proudly served in many non-traditional occupational specialties for years.
However, servicewomen are far more likely to be injured, to suffer chronic pain, and to suffer health problems such as infertility and higher risks of suicide. Female attrition rates in combat arms units have been twice those of men.
If women were involuntarily conscripted, combat arms units would become less strong, less fast, more vulnerable to debilitating injuries, less ready for deployment on short notice, and less accurate with offensive weapons during combat operations.
There is no evidence that military women want to be forced into the combat arms on the same involuntary basis as men. Nor is this a politically popular “women’s issue.”
A recent Rasmussen national survey found that 58% of female respondents were “somewhat” or “strongly opposed” to drafting women. (22% and 36%, respectively)
This consequential legislation such as this should be publicly debated in advance, not dropped like a surprise package wrapped in camouflage and approved behind closed doors. “Draft Our Daughters” is unwarranted, unacceptable, and it must not be enacted in law.