Why should women be exempt from the draft?
Perhaps the more interesting question is whether there should be military registration at all. In 2019, a bipartisan bill was introduced in Congress that would abolish the Selective Service System entirely, and repeal all state and federal sanctions for failing to register, which include denial of federal student aid and job training as well as federal jobs. Also, at least on paper, violators face fines of up to $250,000 and/or five years in jail, but no one has been indicted for failing to register since 1986  and that case was dismissed before trial. "No young person, regardless of gender, should be subject to a military draft or be forced to register for a draft in the United States," said one of the House bill's sponsors, Democratic U.S. Rep. Peter A. DeFazio of Oregon. "The military draft registration system is an unnecessary, wasteful bureaucracy which unconstitutionally violates Americans' civil liberties. We should be abolishing military draft registration altogether, not expanding it." For feminists with pacifist tendencies like me, the issue of all-gender Selective Service registration poses a dilemma.