MAGA is really trying to use the draft to defend taking away women’s reproductive rights

Recently, MAGA men have begun arguing that because they had to register for the draft, which hasn’t happened in half a century, the government should control women’s bodies and deny them reproductive rights.

The last man drafted into the U.S. military was Dwight Elliot Stone, all the way back on June 30, 1973. After that, the United States moved to an all-volunteer military, which is how it has been for 51 years. The Selective Service System still exists, meaning all eligible men register for the draft. It’s largely just a safety precaution or the absolute last resort option in the case of an emergency. For a draft to resurface and make it through numerous political hoops to go into effect, the circumstances would have to be a crisis of the highest order. As a result, the chances of a draft ever happening again are slim and would only arise if something went terribly, terribly wrong.

Although the Selective Service Service has been reserved, it has little effect on men today. The vast majority will never experience a draft. Meanwhile, the last time a man was charged for failing to register for Selective Service was in 1986. However, a bunch of men who have never been and never will be drafted into war are suddenly convinced that being required to register for the Selective Service System is equivalent to women being denied access to abortion care.

Men claim the draft is equivalent to denying women reproductive rights

Recently, Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast. During the interview, host Alex Cooper asked, “Can we think of any law that gives the government the power to make a decision about a man’s body?” Harris responded with a resounding “No.” It’s not the first time this question and answer has arisen. Harris once asked Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh that very same question, and he responded that he couldn’t think of a single law like that. There is no law that makes critical medical decisions for men, or that makes it possible to deny men the right to medical care that could save their lives.

However, one man, Ryan James Girdusky, claimed there is a law that allows the government to make decisions about men’s bodies: the draft. To be fair, the discussion of bodily autonomy can extend to the draft. Men who were forced into military service due to the draft did have their bodily autonomy violated. If it were still 1973, people would agree with Girdusky that there is a law that allows the government to control men. In reality, though, no man has been forced to go to war since 1973. There are women today who are being denied medical care until they nearly bleed to death due to the government’s desire to control their bodies through abortion bans. This isn’t the same as men having to register for the hypothetical draft, which hasn’t happened in their lifetime. It makes no sense to bring up the 51-year-old draft in relation to the discussion of the government’s history of making decisions about women’s bodies.

Not only are men comparing two things that just aren’t equivalent, but they’re trying to use it to argue that women shouldn’t have bodily autonomy. Even Date Right Stuff jumped on the trend, suggesting that the 51-year-old draft means that there’s no disparity between the government’s control of women’s bodies and men’s bodies. Suddenly, all these men who have likely never even thought of the draft in their entire lives are claiming that the government controls their bodies, so it’s acceptable for the government also to control women’s bodies in an entirely different manner. Despite these men insisting that they’re currently oppressed by the draft, none of them have been able to tell us what war they were drafted into. It’s also laughable that men like John McEntee are pretending they’d be a part of a draft as if they wouldn’t be draft dodgers like their hero, Donald Trump.

Again, the draft is an issue, and if the chance of it ever going into effect arises, there will be conversations about bodily autonomy. However, the draft isn’t relevant to the discussion of women’s reproductive rights. The vast majority of men in America today have never experienced the government trying to control their bodies, and they never will. Additionally, for the government to even attempt to do this, there would have to be an extreme crisis on a global scale. Alternatively, women’s bodies are controlled daily just because they have reproductive organs. Even if a draft was in effect, it’s awful to try to use one wrong to excuse another wrong. If men genuinely are so oppressed by the draft, shouldn’t they be vouching for the right to bodily autonomy for everyone because it will work in their favor, too?