Why shouldn't women have to register for the draft?

Great Debates
61

Well, in my country all men has to join the army and women can volunterily join. In that case, they will undergo exactly the same training and duties as the men.
There is no exceptions.

I do not see any problem in that all women should go through the army.
What’s the difference who is killing the enemy? The enemy will kill everyone anyhow, (and those fuckers gets medals for it).

So, do you think the argument that the dead woman would/could have given birth in the future if she had lived, is an important one?

Henry

62

I am only posting to add a few stats. They are a little old, but that’s the way it works with these sites.

From Peristats.com:

I’m sorry, I will continue looking for stillbirths.

63

No less and no more important than that a dead man would/could have been a father, had he lived. See my earlier post on this subject. If a war kills off a lot of men, the surviving men may have a greater choice of mates as a result, but I do not believe it has been at all common for there to be a lot of unpartnered women rebuilding the population after a war. (I am open to correction if anyone knows differently.)

Aside:

I found this astonishing (and enormously praiseworthy). Given the standard of healthcare etc available in the States in 1991, to have made such a big dent in infant mortality figures over the ensuing decade is a fantastic achievement! What factors led to the improvement?

64

Clarification: By this -

[QUOTE=Malacandra]
Given the standard of healthcare etc available in the States in 1991, to have made such a big dent in infant mortality figures over the ensuing decade is a fantastic achievement! /QUOTE]

  • I meant that I should have thought that by 1991 US infant survival rates were already among the best in the world, and I am surprised as much improvement as this was possible.
65

pleased I’d like to take a moment to give partial credit to the organization I work for, March of Dimes Birth Defects Organization.

After the polio vaccine, they looked around and thought - what health care issue has no one looking after it? And surprisingly, it turned out to be babies.

There are close to half a million babies born prematurely in the US and the fact is people just aren’t aware that babies born prematurely often have serious, long-term disablities.

The organization works to “improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality.”

Why, just the idea that every woman should take 400 micrograms of folic acid daily is so prevalent due to one of our campaigns - and folic acid drops the chances of having a baby born with a neural tube defect by as much as 70 percent.

Currently we have a prematurity campaign running; between 1981 and 2003 the rates of prematurity rose from 9.4 to 12.3 percent and *fully half the time *we have no clue why a baby is born prematurely.

So…that’s where your donated dollars go; either to research grants, or lately, to our NICU support specialists that work closely right in the NICU, helping parents and nurses.

Since I’ve gotten on this hijack, I may as well add: females, please take your daily folic acid even if you are not intending to get pregnant. Some large percentage of pregnancies are unexpected, and while we don’t have all the answers, we do have some. You don’t want to spend days and days in the NICU, looking at your baby through glass, like Tyler Jameson.

End hijack, and thank you for letting me ramble.

66

I missed this. You have no idea how wrong you are. US is terrible, shitty, absolutely awful at this. Let me find you some stats.

67

Ok, I used to have a chart, in which the US was listed somewhere amongst the 20’s as having low birthweight & premature babies - 1 being the lowest mortality rate. I can’t find the chart at home; here’s an article:

She claims it’s not altogether a bad thing; perhaps. Another link:

Natural Solutions Radio

AHA! Here’s the chart:
Ranking

Pretty freakin’ terrible, and we just don’t know why.

68

It may well not be true, but rumor has it that the US counts infant morality differently than some other countries with regards to premature babies - something like we count a baby born before viability as “live birth” if they breathe at all/have a pulse even when there’s not hope of them living more than a few minutes. Perhaps someone can confirm or refute this.

69

It would be easier for them to just claim to be homosexual.

70

There’s no way that would still work if the draft was reinstated. The government would have to let gays in the military since large numbers of straight men would claim to be gay/bi to get out of it. There isn’t anyware near the stigma today as there was during Vietman.

71

Malacandra, in general word usage, the word lie indicates the intention to mislead. That’s why people in general, and me in this case, take offence when they are called liars. The word mistake indicates the absence of such an intent.

I guess it is as hard for me to believe you don’t know the difference between those two words, as it is hard for you to believe I could make the mistake of calling the actual number of 339 women dying in childbirth, in the USA 3 % of the total of births.

72

Oh no, I know the difference between the two words quite well, thank you. It just struck me that “mistake” in this context struck me as being similar to “error of judgment” when it’s used by a senior politician who’d been caught with his hand in the till up to the elbow.

I quite understand that you made the honest mistake of thinking a particular statistic was true which, if it were so, would imply that there were about 1000 births annually in the US, and that every Doper would have known personally a great many women who died in childbirth. Let’s draw a line under it and move on.

(While I find Anaamika’s statistics interesting and am glad to have read them, I’m faintly puzzled as to where infant mortality comes into this argument at all. :slight_smile: )

73

I agree that is what it must look like to a Great Debate veteran in full battle dress like you, Malacandra. However, I can personally vouch for two very strongly developed weak spots in Maastricht. The first is her occasional inability to handle numbers properly - at times, for instance when we play scrabble, she’ll resort to adding up the score point-by-point just shy of bringing out the old ‘manual abacus’.

The second is a blind-spot when it comes to strategy. While Maastricht’s general and factual knowledge is surpassed by few - as she just recently demonstrated in a TV quiz on Dutch national television (winning the first round) - this is compensated by a most charming lack of strategic insight - again, as she just recently demonstrated in a TV quiz on Dutch national television (losing the second round). :wink:

In short, when she says 339 people, that’s the figure she means and understands. When she starts calculating things from there on, be alert but gentle. :wink:

Also, while she is a Straight Dope veteran, if you care to do a search you’ll see that she generally steers clear of the Great Debates arena - confrontation is something she has tended to shy away from. You are witnessing a rare thing - do us all a favor and encourage her to stay, please? :wink:

74

Heh. Whether in GD or in real life I would always steer clear of battle dress for the exact same reason, Arwin: dread of getting my ass kicked by the real veterans for my pretension. :smiley:

Can I get a “woot!” here? Woot! Woot! ::applauds::

Oops

Be glad to. :cool:

75

Could we start again, please?

Can someone clear up for me term “draft” in the US? Are we talking “military boot camp training for xx months” or are we talking: “Say goodbye to job and home, the army commands you to go fight a war somewhere?”

Of course the two are connected in countries with a civilian army. But in the Netherlands, the cries of “no fair” from the boys in my class were directed at having to spend the months in boot camp. The likelihood of them having to fight in a Dutch war was only a theoretic possibility. I suppose this is different in the USA.

Military draft for women is a moot point in the Netherlands anyway. The obligatory military selection and training was officially abolished in 1997. (it started walking on its last legs in the eighties) Now the army is an normal employer, employing professionals, both women and men. It was even on the news last month we had our first female Dutch general.
I really don’t know if, if Holland is ever military invaded again, all the men who received military training in the 1960’s-80’s are called up again to fight. I highly doubt it.

Am I pro or against a military draft (training and the possibility of being called to go to war) for women? It certainly seems fair.

On the other hand, and here are my arguments from higher up this thread again, bearing children has one of the important disadvantages of a being a soldier, and that is a likely chance for the individual to get hurt or die. Whatever the risks are statistically, it takes courage to face them, individually. (IMHO, that risk is felt by men too; seeing your wife and child in the pains and risks of labour can’t be any easier on a guy, then for a soldier seeing his buddy get wounded!)
Another disadvantage I mentioned is losing career-years, and this holds for anyone, (fathers and mothers, but usually mothers) caring for small children.

These are real disadvantages, and I do feel strongly that they should be taken into consideration before a guy says flat out: “Boys get to do the dirty dangerous work while the girls sit safely at home eating chocolate and watching Oprah”.
Please note that I say: “taken into account”. I honestly don’t know if these disadvantages equal, or should equal, the burden of fighting in the military.

Apart from losing career years and physical risks, motherhood and military duty can be compared in many other ways, and the comparison makes as much or as little sense as the person comparing sees in it.

And that is my real opinion.

Damn Great Debates: I come in to volunteer an opinion I once heard that may be relevant to the OP and that might remind someone else, better equipped then myself, to debate it; and before I know it, I find myself defending it, without even supporting it fully. Damn you, Malacandra. :wink:

By the way, what is the opinion of posters in this thread on social duty for men AND women? As in: every eighteen year old, male or female, spends a year either in military training or in performing some community service., their choice.
I’d be all for it!

Malacandra, actually, your usage of the word “liar” taught me something valuable. I have been accused of using too strong a language in the fire of a lively conversation myself quite often. For instance, I’d tell a friend : “That’'s just frustration speaking” My friend then would feel insulted and misunderstood. Then it owuld be my turn to feel indignant, thinking: “Oh stop being such an hypocritical sissy. Despite all the veiled language, that is what it amounts to, no? Let’s all just be straigtforward and call a spade a spade. Saves everybody a lot of time”.
It’s good to be on the other side of that argument for once. :slight_smile:

76

Okay, Maastricht.

There has been no draft in the sense of “mandatory service” in the US since Vietnam. The American military is composed of volunteers, both men and women.

However, males must register with the Selective Service on or just after their 18th birthday. Since there is no draft, it’s just a formality. Mr. Moto can explain that part of it; since I’m female, I didn’t have to do it.

One of the arguments against registering women is that women have the tendency to get pregnant and have children. Physically, there is no real problem; after a while, pregnant women in the service are put on light duty. However, drafting women who are mothers causes a number of political and practical problems. In the case of single mothers, who takes care of the kids? Women who volunteer must have a child-care plan in place before they deploy, but this is one of the risks of military service. But what of the single parent who really has no one to rely on in case of draft? Politically (and especially in terms of image), it’s a disaster because we don’t want to think of mothers in harm’s way.

Robin

77

Er…I’m sorry. I read through the whole thread, and thought there was some debate on the dangers of pregnancy as compared to the dangers of war, as well as the chances of having a healthy living baby (meaning you’d need more women out of the war to birth them). Seems it was mostly about maternal mortality during childbirth. Sorry.

78

I can certainly explain it. In addition to having registered at 18, and serving as an active duty Navy sailor in my twenties, I currently serve as a local board member for the Selective Service System.

Registration is required, and it really isn’t a formality. Registrants form another pool of men able to fight, after our active duty, drilling reserve, National Guard and Individual Ready Reserve forces. Men are draftable from age 18 until their twenty-sixth birthday, and the draft is done by lottery from this registration pool if a draft is in place.

A draft hasn’t been in place since 1973, though. Before then, it ran continuously from 1948 until that year, and also from 1940 through 1946.

79

I’m a childless female, 29 (and thus probably not so desireable any more for the U.S. military), but I’m all for both women and men alike registering. I’d have done it myself, but I think my officials were a little more on the ball and wouldn’t have allowed me to.

However, as MsRobyn has said, once childless women become mothers, there’s a whole host of issues that must be addressed. And the solutions to these issues are not popular. It’s the easier response (not the more correct, just the easier) to simply eliminate them out of hand.

I’ve also read (sorry, no cite - I don’t remember where I read it; coulda been on these boards) of a study that stated that bad things happen psycologically when women serve in wartime, battle conditions. Soldiers seem to have a harder time of it when they come across a fallen comrade who’s a woman - they see their mothers, sisters, wives in her and apparently it’s more damaging than if it’s Bob who was killed. Again, I’m sorry for the spotty recollection and the lack of a cite. Perhaps it was a study about Israeli troops?

It should be patently obvious to everyone that women and men are different, and thus will probably serve different roles (which means I’m not crying for equal conditions), but I don’t really see how those physical differences would exclude women from serving in combat. I’m certain there’s thousands of women who would, were they allowed to (moreso than they already are, that is). I would. But I can also see why it’s distasteful to the military to try to work in such a policy.

80

I’d like for some equality in the Selective Service system, though a draft seems increasingly less likely. However, if you allow for any sort of exemption due to pregnancy/ infant children, how much do you want to bet we’ll see a baby boom the day after you announce a draft is necessary?

Basically, if you make the exemption as easy as getting pregnant, you can expect a lot of people to use that loophole. All you’ve done is wrecked your credibility a bit by instituting an unenforceable policy.