Throughout history, most men and women—and even children—have recognized the wisdom of not sending our mothers, daughters, and sisters to the battlefield. The pattern in the Bible is that when combat is necessary it is men, not women, who bear the responsibility to participate in warfare.

The Story

Congress appears poised to force young women to register for the military draft.

The Background

A group of Senate Democrats is proposing a rewrite of the military draft laws to require that women register for the Selective Service System. The “draft” is the commonly used term for mandatory military conscription. This is a means of fulfilling the personnel requirements of the military during a time of conflict.

The language proposed by Senate Armed Services Chair Jack Reed (D-R.I.) would expand registration for the service to “All Americans.” According to POLITICO, the changes to Selective Service could be attached to the National Defense Authorization Act, a defense policy bill that’s one of the few pieces of legislation considered a “must-pass” by Congress.

Current law states that U.S. men must register for the service for potential military conscription when they turn 18. Men who fail to register for the draft can be fined, imprisoned, or denied federal jobs.

In the United States, the draft has been employed by the federal government in four conflicts: the Civil War; World War I; World War II; and the Cold War (including the Korean and Vietnam Wars). From 1940 until 1973, both in war and peacetime, men were drafted to fill vacancies in the armed forces. The draft ended when the United States military moved to an all-volunteer military force in 1973. When President Jimmy Carter restored draft registration in 1980, he asked Congress to include women but was rebuffed.

That same year, several men brought a federal lawsuit claiming the sex-based discrimination of the draft violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. In that case, Rostker v. Goldberg (1981), the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the exclusion, ruling that there was no violation of the due process clause. The Supreme Court based its decision largely on the Department of Defense’s policy excluding women from combat. “Men and women, because of the combat restrictions on women, are simply not similarly situated for purposes of a draft or registration for a draft,” the court’s majority opinion said.

The issue was considered again in 1992, 1994, and 1998, but rejected each time because the policy excluding women from combat roles remained in place. Starting in 2016, however, the Defense Department lifted all sex-based restrictions on military service. This removed the primary legal barrier that excluded women from having to register with the Selective Service.

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