There were only a handful of Republicans who were willing to stare down a Democrat-controlled Congress and their GOP colleagues until they abandoned the measure in the National Defense Authorization Act requiring women to be part of the national draft. Those few who did stand up for the nation’s wives, sisters, and daughters, however, deserve our praise.
Earlier this year, five Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee voted to move the Democrat-proposed amendment forward into the NDAA, including warmonger Rep. Liz Cheney, who previously voted against drafting women. The same scenario occurred in the Senate. While a handful of GOP members such as Sens. Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton stood firm and opposed the measure on the grounds that no one should sign up to “draft our daughters,” other so-called culture war conservatives such as Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Tommy Tuberville voted with Republican Sens. Thom Tillis, Dan Sullivan, Kevin Cramer, and Rick Scott to draft women.
The GOP legislators who fought the measure, some of them fathers of daughters, cited multiple reasons for their opposition, but it was mostly on moral grounds.
“American women have heroically served in and alongside our fighting forces since our nation’s founding. It’s one thing to allow American women to choose this service, but it’s quite another to force it upon our daughters, sisters, and wives,” Hawley wrote on Twitter in July.
It’s one thing to allow American women to choose this service, but it’s quite another to force it upon our daughters, sisters, and wives. Missourians feel strongly that compelling women to fight our wars is wrong and so do I
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) July 23, 2021
There were other problems with the measure. It was a broad “blank check” for the Pentagon to use to do its bidding, it ignored the biological and military effectiveness differences between men and women, and it proudly ushered in a new era of the far left’s “gender-neutral” language. To the senators who opposed it, the provision was a slap in the face to the public, which increasingly has problems with drafting women.
“Most Americans say if a woman wants to serve that’s wonderful — and by the way, women have been absolutely central to our war efforts since we have been a country, in many different ways including, of course, fighting. But the idea that they be forced into compulsory service, I just think it’s crazy,” Hawley told Fox News in November.
Republicans such as Hawley faced backlash from other members and neoconservatives who scowled at them for threatening to delay future war monies and said they would be stifling equality and “denying the country the capability of women,” but the holdouts didn’t back down.
This week, however, the persistence of people such as Hawley and Rep. Chip Roy, who threatened to throw the voting on NDAA into disarray if the provision wasn’t addressed, forced congressional leaders on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees to leave out the measure requiring women to register for the Selective Service.
“Rep. Roy is pleased to see reports that the House and Senate leadership finally did the right thing and removed the absurd requirement for women to register for the draft,” a spokesman for Roy’s office told The Federalist this week. “We look forward to reviewing the final bill text, and — given the nature of this town — hope that these reports will actually come to fruition in it. Until then, the Congressman will not stop fighting to ensure that this country does not draft our daughters. Full stop.”
By standing up to not only the Democrats but also their own party and the Twitter mob, these brave members of Congress left young women the choice to join the military without the pressure of being a pawn used to usher more “equity” into an increasingly social justice-driven bureaucracy. They deserve our gratitude for refusing to cave.
