Should Women Be Drafted? Congress Weighs the Question Yet Again

Kate Kuzminski, director of the Center for New American Security’s program on Military, Veterans & Society said various members of Congress has attempted to add women to the military draft since soon after Congress lifted rules in 2013 that kept women out of combat roles. In 2016, two Republicans introduced the “Draft America’s Daughters” bill, which Kuzminski said was “pretty provocative.”

“They opposed the lifting of combat restrictions on women and then the logic followed that if women could serve in combat positions, then they would have to enter the draft,” Kuzminski said. “It was like a back door way of opposing women in combat positions to raise awareness around the fact that they could then be drafted.”

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Kuzminski said in the event that the U.S. calls for a draft, constitutionally of an all-male registration system could have legal standing – especially in an era where women can join combat units.

“There’s a way to square the circle with both the left and the right and to say – statistically, most women are not going to be eligible for those combat positions. That’s also true of a lot of men,” Kuzminski said. “But, if we were in a national emergency that requires a draft, we would still need to surge our human capital in order to meet the effort, whether it’s in the medical community or the logistics, supporting those who are going off to combat.”

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