Don’t Draft Our Daughters for Front-Line Combat Duty

Last year, thanks to hard work from dozens of conservative groups, a handful of congressional Republicans managed to kill a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would have required America’s young women to register for the draft. 

Yet, here we are again. With the Senate Armed Services Committee passing this provision in the yearly NDAA bill and the House set to consider legislation next week, we will see if Democrats — with the potential support of Republicans — will once again push forward legislation to force our daughters to the front lines. 

Will the Army draft women to fill combat roles is the subject of congressional debate.

This legislation will harm the American family, undermine our military readiness, and is an overt attempt to advance a radical agenda that seeks to eliminate all distinctions between men and women. Republicans knew that last year; it’s no different now. 

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Last year’s victory proved that if conservatives fight for family values in the NDAA, we can win. There’s no excuse for any member of Congress — especially a Republican — to support an NDAA that, in the name of “national defense” sets the stage to conscript mothers and daughters to the battlefield.  

This is not, and has never been, a question of whether women can serve effectively in our armed forces; the answer is obviously yes. Thousands already do voluntarily, and they deserve the utmost commendation for their service and sacrifice. But today there are around 17 million men of draft-registration age and some 60 million of “fighting age” (18 to 49), the vast majority of whom are able-bodied.  

Many of my colleagues argue that women will never be sent to the front lines. Oh, really? Much of the left can no longer define what a woman is and is working to destroy any and all distinctions between the sexes. They teach children that girls can become boys, boys can become girls, and that men can become pregnant. Even in the military itself, they applaud radical gender ideology and force biological women to share living space with anyone else who identifies as one. 

Worse, many of those same colleagues say we won’t need to draft women unless it’s “really bad.” Well, which is it? If it’s “really bad,” then everyone’s going to the front lines. The truth is that this a question of whether we as a nation, and we as Republicans will unnecessarily force young women to fight wars through conscription in the name of political correctness. That’s it. 

Chasing “equity” over military readiness threatens the fabric of our nation by playing into the radical left’s anti-science gender ideology; it will undermine the very security of our nation that our armed forces are charged with defending. Men and women are innately different, they bring with them different physical capabilities. While of course some women are as capable as men on the battlefield, on average they are not. In 2015, the U.S. Marine Corps spent over $30 million to conduct a study on this question, unsurprisingly finding that all-male units outperformed mixed-gender units nearly 70% of the time in ground combat tasks. 

Or more recently, take into consideration the controversial Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT). After changing the test multiple times, the Army decided to drop the gender-neutral standards after nearly 50% of female soldiers could not pass previous versions. More disturbingly, these standards were eventually dropped for physically demanding combat roles. When Senator Tom Cotton, R-AR, asked about this decision, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth admitted they abandoned these standards because “we didn’t want to disadvantage any subgroups.” 

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Incorporating women into the draft is just another step in the left’s long quest to eliminate distinctions between the sexes and impose their extreme agenda on the rest of us. They failed last year, but if they fail again this year, they’ll try again next year. They won’t give up, and we can’t, either. 

A military that cares more about “equity” than military readiness will waste no time putting your daughter on the front lines. The purpose of the Selective Service is to ensure the availability of combat replacements for casualties on the battlefield. When the United States is in peril, not pulling replacements from the strongest subsection of our population disadvantages all — including “subgroups.”  

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Republicans must never fall prey to the notion that we “must-pass” legislation at the expense of our future and must always stand up for our daughters and our country’s security. Last year’s NDAA showed that we can win this fight, if we commit.  

Word on the street is that there is an understanding by Republicans that drafting women is not the right path to take. Lord willing, that is the case. But make no mistake: if Congress passes legislation to register our daughters to be drafted, it will be Republicans who make it happen. 

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