You’re 19 years old. You get a latter from your local draft board. Your number’s come up and you’ve been drafted. You report for your physical and are deemed physically and mental fit for military service. You apply for conscientious objector status, but the tribunal rules against you. You do get a student deferment, but that only let’s you finish out the semester. You don’t have any relatives dependent on you. Your options are to; report for duty (in which case you could end up in combat), get pregnant (you’re single, but fertile), dodge the draft (either by going underground or fleeing the country), or go to prison. Which do you choose? Only answer this poll if you are a woman.
Report for duty. I’ve never felt it was fair that only men were drafted.
Well I would never apply for consciencious objector status, because I am not a consciencious objector. I am, however, a supporter of applying the draft equally to men and women, and supported that position back in 1976, during the debate over the Equal Rights Amendment. I said then (when I was actually too young to serve), that I would serve if drafted, and I felt the same way at age 19. Now, of course, I’m too old to be drafted.
Your question does raise an interesting point that I’d never thought about before. If the draft was instituted for women, and pregnancy allowed you to avoid combat (if not service itself), what kind of impact would that have on the birth rate?
Does anyone know the situation in Israel, where women do have mandatory service?
Gotta go with other, because it would depend on the war. I believe that if there is the need or a draft, it should include both men and women, but there have been a number of US wars that I don’t support. So I would either report for duty, or end up in jail.
I personally can’t imagine getting pregnant to avoid being drafted. At one point, I told my parents (who were pressuring me to give them grandkids), that I couldn’t think of a worse reason to have child than “my parents want to be grandparent”. “I want to avoid being in the military” may be a worse reason.
I say this knowing I will be called naive, but I really don’t believe the draft is coming back any time soon, UNLESS we really need it. For example, if somehow a greater superpower actually invades our own soil. And in that case, I wouldn’t even apply for objector status. I wouldn’t sign up, but when I was conscripted, I’d go - and I’m of a pacifistic philosophy to start with. Doesn’t mean I won’t stand up to defend my own country when called upon.
So I can only answer the question if I am a woman, but I have to pretend that the very narrow restrictions applied to me at 19 even if they didn’t? When I was 19, I’d have been a STRONGLY conscientious objector who was very motivated to obtain my degree, with the belief that a well-spoken valedictorian has a higher calling than getting blown up on the battlefield or wasting my youth cooking or tending to others who’ve gotten blown up on the battlefield. I wouldn’t have gotten pregnant or underground/out of the US because it would have ruined my education and projected future as effectively as joining the military.
I guess they’d have to put my 19 year old self in jail. But I wouldn’t have gone quietly. I honestly believe, though, that there is literally zero chance that I wouldn’t have been granted CO status on account of my outstanding academics, my strong objection to war, and my ability to form a charismatic argument. I was also not physically fit to join the military at 5’2" and 225 pounds.
(Not to say I would feel this way now, but you phrased the hypothetical at age 19, and I’m trying to adhere to that)
I would report for duty. I couldn’t evade the draft in good conscience knowing others had had to go and did. Solidarity, I guess.
I would never get pregnant solely to avoid being drafted.
I also think that women should have to sign up for the draft.
I’m 41 now, but I’m certain my 19-year-old self would have agreed.
The name kinda gives it away.
Report for duty.
I actually enlisted at 17 (legal with a parents permission).
Too many variables. Is it what I would consider a just war? If you join the military you give up the right to decide that, but as draftee I would still consider it an ethical decision I would have to make at the time. If drafted to a war like Iraq, I would most likely flee the country. I have dual citizenship so I could go anywhere in Europe. Of course, if America was under attack from a serious enough enemy that the draft had been reinstated, the whole world would most likely have gone mad and it would probably be unsafe anywhere. I doubt ‘going to jail’ would be an option in that case.
My comments have nothing to do with my gender, by the way. I agree that women and men should have to make the same choice.
Does any country require women to enlist in a potential conscription pool? Do any of the countries with involuntary military service requirements require females to join? I’m just curious.
Israel was already mentioned in this thread, and wikipedia lists others that draft women.
The list according to the wikipedia gods:
Benin
Chad
China
Cuba
Egypt
Eritrea
Israel
Libya
Malaysia
North Korea
Peru
Tunisia
Côte d’Ivoire
Mongolia
the United Kingdom during World War II, beginning in 1941, women were brought into the scope of conscription but, as all women with dependent children were exempt and many women were informally left in occupations such as nursing or teaching, the number conscripted was relatively few.[31]
I didn’t expect the list to be that long. I knew Israel and North Korea.
Sorry, OP, the only church I’ve ever belonged to is the Mennonite church - Conscientious Objector status, here I come!
I don’t like any of your options - I don’t want to do any of those things.
I mean
:mad:
Do not taunt Carol the Impaler!!!
Given the narrow premise of the OP, I would have to say go to prison. Were I a CO, I would hope to hell that I had enough conviction of my beliefs to serve time there rather than run, get knocked up or betray my conviction by serving in the military.
That’s what happened to any number of Mennonites in western Canada in World War I and II- they were adjudicated by a tribunal, and if the tribunal was in a bad mood that day, off to jail they went.
I believe in an all volunteer military, so I’d probably become Canadian.
It would depend on the war. I’m not a pacifist, but I am generally against war.
My dad was drafted to fight in Vietnam, and worked hard to acquire conscientious objector status to avoid the war legally. So I was definitely raised to think negatively of the draft and to question the reason behind wars.
At 19, I would have reported for duty without a great deal of thought. I wasn’t particularly enamoured of the military or anything but I would have been totally sucked in by the possibility of ‘adventure’. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be pregnant or in jail and I wouldn’t have been able to convince myself I could successfully avoid the draft without ending up in jail anyway.
Nowadays (26) I am against any non-voluntary military service. I wouldn’t get pregnant or go to jail to avoid it though, as those things would screw up my life* just as much as sudden unwanted military service. I would just try to dodge the draft, I guess.
If it just so happened that I were conscripted to fight in a war I thought was truly just and worthwhile, if it was for something that made me feel like it would not be a waste to die for, I would serve. But I haven’t encountered many of those.
*Not to mention potentially screwing up the kid’s life. Terrible reason to have a kid.