Senate committee passes bill forcing women to register for draft

A U.S. Senate committee passed a groundbreaking proposal in July that would force young women to register with Selective Service and be eligible for a future draft.

Current law requires men to register with Selective Service when they reach the age of 18. Selective Service keeps a list of all men ages 18-25 eligible for the draft.

But under the proposal passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee, young women, too, would be required to register. The proposal passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. 

Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America, criticized the proposal.

“American women are free to serve and proud to serve, but they shouldn’t be forced to serve,” Nance said. “Young women today need to know they are respected for their female status and the many essential roles women embrace in all seasons of life as workers, wives, mothers and caregivers. Setting women up to be sent to war shouldn’t be one of them.

“The selective service is not a social experiment,” Pence added. “Women do not need to be conscripted to fight on the frontlines of war to prove their worth. Nor should we be denied the respect of our intrinsic value based on the inherent physical differences we embody. God-given distinctions between the sexes have everything to do with military readiness in wartime.”

Seminary president Albert Mohler also denounced the idea, saying drafting women would have been unthinkable “throughout most of our nation’s history.”

“A society that will send its women into war is a society that, to some significant extent, is at war with itself and at war with nature,” said Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

—The Hill, CWFA, AlbertMohler.com