Not long ago, the Obama administration determined that women can enter all military combat occupations. Now the debate has quickly shifted to whether women can be forced into combat.

Suddenly, the exceptional qualifications and ambition of a few women seeking ground combat roles could have significant consequences for all women.

A proposal to “Draft America’s Daughters,” part of the National Defense Authorization Act, is headed for the House floor the week of May 16. The policy would require women between the ages of 18 and 26 to register for Selective Service, making them eligible to be called up—right along with young men—if Congress were to reinstate the draft.

Congress should act now to prohibit forcing women into combat, including through requiring them to register for Selective Service. Congress should also revisit the Obama administration’s decision to open all combat roles to women without exception, which increases pressure to include women in the draft. The rush to advance these policies ignores the military’s own research on the issue and leaves a number of critical questions unresolved.

Exceptions Denied

In 2013, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta directed the military services to conduct reviews with the goal of integrating women into all combat occupations by January 2016. Service chiefs had until September 2015 to request exceptions.

The most extensive review was the Marine Corps’ Gender Integration Task Force, which evaluated mixed gender units in combat training activities over nine months. On 134 ground combat tasks, all-male units outperformed mixed units in 69 percent of the tasks. Mixed units outperformed male units in just two tasks. The findings showed significant differentials in performance between females and males. Top-performing females overlapped with low-performing males. Female training course completion rates lagged well behind men, and women’s injury rate was much higher.

Women’s increased risk of injury in combat-related tasks (especially load-bearing tasks that depend considerably on physiology) makes them more vulnerable when engaging the enemy. “Combat is not an equal opportunity for women because they don’t have an equal opportunity to survive,” says Jude Eden, who served in the Marine Corps but opposes opening combat roles to women. Women on the front lines would be especially at risk if captured by the enemy (consider the Islamic State’s brutalization of female prisoners in recent months).

The moral framework guiding Western policy for the use of force requires strategic choices to minimize casualties in combat. It is one thing for women to be drawn into combat incidentally or to be attached to a combat unit for a discrete functional mission. But it’s quite another to plan to send women into frontline ground combat knowing, as Eden says, “they don’t have an equal opportunity to survive.”

Combat Effectiveness or Social Goals?

The Marines’ evaluation of the combat effectiveness of mixed units led the commandant of the Marine Corps to recommend in September 2015 that some ground combat roles continue to be limited to men. That request was rebuffed, however, and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter declared in December that all military occupations, without exception, would be open to women as of Jan. 1, 2016.

Brushing past such military concerns was in step with a comment made by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey at the outset of the review period. As he told military commanders back in 2013, if a woman could not meet their units’ standards, they would have to justify why the standards need to be that high. Meanwhile, in May 2015, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus directed that one in four enlisted recruits in the Navy and Marine Corps should be women.

These instances raise questions about whether social goals have taken precedence over military objectives in the march to put women in combat. Moreover, the momentum to open all options for the few extraordinary women seeking to serve in ground combat is now propelling us toward a requirement that could affect all women.

Congress should prohibit forcing women into combat and should take a longer look at the blanket policy of women in all combat roles, prioritizing military effectiveness as it does so. Equality does not mean disregarding differences that are relevant to accomplishing the mission—especially when that mission is life or death.

Women in the armed forces have courageously served our nation with distinction, including during wartime. It does not do justice to the valor and sacrifice they have made in many different roles to suggest that women’s equality cannot be achieved without sending women into ground combat.

Women in Combat: May or Must?

While other arguments against including women in a draft can be made, some members of Congress and two federal court challenges already are seeking to exploit the opening of all combat roles to women to get a different result.

The combat exclusion was a significant factor in a 1981 Supreme Court case on registering women for Selective Service.

In Rostker v. Goldberg, the Supreme Court deferred to Congress, citing the combat distinction. “Since women are excluded from combat, Congress concluded that they would not be needed in the event of a draft, and therefore decided not to register them,” Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the majority. “Congress was certainly entitled, in the exercise of its constitutional powers to raise and regulate armies and navies, to focus on the question of military need rather than ‘equity.’”

If the draft were reinstated in a future conflict and women were included, what would the consequences be for combat effectiveness, for individual women sent into frontline ground combat, for the men alongside them, or for families and society at large?

With such looming questions unanswered, Congress should prohibit forcing women into combat, including through Selective Service registration. And, since many voices are already citing the fact that women can serve in all combat posts to argue that women must register for the draft, Congress should also revisit the blanket policy of women in combat. (For more from the author of “Don’t Force America’s Daughters Into Combat” please click HERE)

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By Carlo Munoz. House lawmakers took a large step toward putting female soldiers on the front lines on Wednesday, approving legislation requiring women to register for the draft.

Members of the House Armed Services committee passed the measure as part of the panel’s version of the defense spending bill for fiscal year 2017, according to the Associated Press.

After a lengthy, and at times heated debate, the legislation only passed by a slim two vote margin with the bill’s main sponsor California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter actually voting against the measure during the House defense spending bill markup on Wednesday.

Hunter, along with former SEAL and Montana Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, initially proposed the plan to require women to register for the draft in Feburary, shortly after the Pentagon lifted its ban on female service members from serving in combat infantry units and special operations forces.

“It’s wrong and irresponsible to make wholesale changes to the way America fights its wars without the American people having a say on whether their daughters and sisters will be on the front lines of combat,” Hunter said at the time. (Read more from “Despicable Congress Moves to Require Female Draft, Force Our Daughters Into Combat” HERE)

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House Committee Votes to Draft Women Into Selective Service

By Daniel Horowitz. We have officially lost it as a civil society. All the gender-bending has taken its toll on our political leaders, forcing them to come full circle and endorse a mandatory draft for all young women in this country.

Yesterday, during a marathon markup of the $610 billion annual defense bill (NDAA), the House Armed Services Committee added an amendment including women in the requirement for all young adults to register for the Selective Service. The amendment was originally sponsored by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), an opponent of social engineering in the military, in order to jumpstart a discussion of how the ‘women in combat agenda’ has gone too far. You might call it a case study of acting absurd in order to illustrate absurdity. But as it turns out, there is no floor to the politically correct insanity of our political class. Republicans Joe Heck, Martha McSally, and Chris Gibson joined the Democrats in passing this amendment and attaching it to the NDAA. The vote tally was 32-30.

To be clear, this entire exercise was pointless and will not become law. Moreover, the Selective Service is gratuitous and will likely go by the wayside one of these days. But the point is we’ve reached rock bottom in our culture when every Democrat and even some Republicans now believe women should be forcibly drafted into the military. Remember, several months ago during the New Hampshire primary debate when every candidate except for Ted Cruz expressed support for women in combat and women registering for the draft. Last year, Trump said he would absolutely support women in combat.

Add this to the endless list of bedrock principles many Republicans are willing to toss overboard. As John Kasich likes to say, we just need to get over it. (For more from the author of “House Committee Votes to Draft Women Into Selective Service” please click HERE)

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Three Republicans Split Ranks, Allow Measure to Pass

By Scott Maucione. The amendment, which narrowly passed 32-30, made for one of the more drastic votes of the 16 1/2 hour marathon, with the author (Rep. Duncan Hunter) voting against his own provision.

The amendment legally requires women to sign up for the selective service when they become adults. In the case of a draft, those women will be called up to military duty just as men are now. . .

The voting on the amendment was split largely along party lines, however a few Republicans broke rank.

Reps. Joe Heck (R-Nev.) Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.) and Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) voted to add women to the selective services. (Read more from “Three Republicans Split Ranks, Allow Measure to Pass” HERE)

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U.S. commando units have been trained to seize and disable nuclear or radioactive bombs, providing a crucial last line of defense if terrorists get their hands on such weapons, according to the general in charge of the forces.

The U.S. Special Operations Command “has sufficient ‘render-safe’ capacity to respond to the most likely” scenarios involving weapons of mass destruction under the current analysis of threats, Army General Raymond Thomas has told lawmakers.

The Pentagon rarely discusses publicly its plans to use commandos if terrorists obtain a nuclear weapon or build a “dirty bomb” from radioactive material. While U.S. officials say there’s no sign yet that Islamic State has such a capability, the prospect was on Friday’s agenda for the Nuclear Security Summit of world leaders being hosted by President Barack Obama in Washington.

Thomas described the role U.S. commandos might play in written responses to the Senate Armed Services Committee before his confirmation as head of the Special Operations Command, a post he took this week. He moved up a rung from his previous role heading the Joint Special Operations Command, directly overseeing fabled — and secretive — units such as the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEAL Team 6. (Read more from “U.S. Commandos Trained to Stop Terrorists With `Dirty Bombs'” HERE)

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Americans Fear the Federal Government More Than Terror

According to a pair of recent polls, for the first time since the 9/11 terrorist hijackings, Americans are more fearful their government will abuse constitutional liberties than fail to keep its citizens safe. (Read more from this story HERE)

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