Should Women be Required to Register for the Draft?

  Since men are the only troops who have served in combat jobs in the past they are required to register for the draft. The draft has not been used for years to compel men to serve and our Armed Forces are all volunteer forces so as long as things go the way that they have been it is unlikely that they will need to reinstitute the draft.

However the situation could arise where we would need to draft troops to serve (although highly unlikely). If that turns out to be the case now that women are eligible to serve in combat MOS's they could conceivably be required to register for the draft.

Let me add here that there are very few women who pushed to be able to fight in combat units. There were a few who did and I wonder how many did it out of patriotism and how many did so just to make a point. I also wonder who were the entities that pushed the ones who did?

The Obama administration's recent decision to lift the ban on women in combat has opened the door for a change in the law that currently compels only men between age 18 and 25 to register for a military draft, according to legal experts and military historians.

Never before has the country drafted women into military service, and neither the administration nor Congress is in a hurry to make them register for a future call-up. But, legally, they may have no other choice.

It is constitutional to register only men for a draft, the Supreme Court ruled more than three decades ago, because the reason for registration is to create a pool of potential combat troops should a national emergency demand a rapid increase in the size of the military. Women were excluded from serving in battlefield jobs, so there was no reason to register them for possible conscription into the armed forces.

Now that front-line infantry, armor, artillery and special operations jobs are open to female volunteers who can meet the physical requirements, it will be difficult for anyone to make a persuasive argument that women should continue to be exempt from registration, said Diane Mazur, a law professor at the University of Florida and a former Air Force officer.

But if you're worried a draft notice is going to soon be in your mailbox, take a deep breath. There is no looming national crisis that makes a military draft likely. This is key because each time there has been a national crisis men will volunteer in force. I believe that the all volunteer force will stand the test of time and that we will never have to draft troops to help our custom military ring troops in combat.