House Passes H.R. 8070 Solidifying Automatic Selective Service Registration for Our Sons… and Daughters
STATEWIDE - On June 15, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 8070, a massive military spending appropriations bill that authorizes $895 billion for military spending in the midst of arguably the greatest era of inflation in recent memory. During a time when the average household is struggling to purchase groceries, nearly every conservative representative in the house has voted to further feed inflation. While this bill is stated to be unlikely to pass the Democrat controlled senate due to provisions which impact spending on abortions and genital mutilation surgeries, the bill does contain a provision expanding Selective Service Registration which has apparently bipartisan support between the Whitehouse and apparently conservative leadership.
Based on language within the bill, Selective Service registration would become automatic across the nation for men and women, except in certain states where legislators have passed “opt out” clauses. In Ohio, registration would happen automatically upon instances of requesting a Driver’s License and would be required to register for tuition assistance. While this has been standard for men in the heartland, the bill would expand registration for Selective Service for women as well during a time when the U.S. is engaged in multiple international conflicts between Ukraine and Palestine.
The expansion to include women was previously attempted in the military budget in 2021 by the Biden Administration. At that time, it was shot down by conservative leadership who saw the move as sacrificing the nations most vulnerable for the sake of “wokeism.”
“This provision was never about improving military readiness,” Rep. Vicky Hartzler, (R-Mo.) said on Twitter. “Instead, it passed through committee under the misplaced guise of ‘equality,’ imposing a woke ideology on our troops rather than meeting the current needs of our military.”
Hartzler was replaced by Rep. Mark Alford, who voted in favor of drafting women.
In Ohio, every Republican representative voted in favor of expanding the military’s budget to nearly a trillion dollars and the possibility of drafting women, a stark reversal of a 2021 attempt to add women to Selective Service registration. There has not been a clear explanation as to why republican leadership opposed the administration's push to conscript women in 2021, and now supports it just 3 years later.
The expansion to include women comes on the tail end of a decade of admission of female victimization from within the military industrial complex. In 2018, a RAND corporation study found that 6.2 percent of females experienced sexual assault of some form, mostly as a form of hazing, within military ranks, which increased in a follow up study conducted in 2021 to 8.4 percent and 1-in-10 female sailors. As all military branches have lowered standards to accommodate female soldier acceptance, one questions the benefit, or even the point, to conscripting the daughters of our nation who are poorly equipped evolutionarily to be at war.
While some may celebrate what they view as a one-upmanship move against the blustering feminism of the modern era and a win for “equality” with the bill’s expansion, others point out the abandonment of principle with the shift. Throughout history, men have fought wars to protect the homeland. The very context of which seems lost in translation with this expansion. One may argue It is not the land itself that is of value, but what resides in it; namely women and children, the very future of a people, family. It is for this philosophical reason that men have volunteered to fight to protect their homes in every civilization throughout history. By offering up our daughters, one questions if the pretense of war for the sake of protecting the homefront vanishes as those things of value die with it, leaving only the financial benefit to investment firms, Raytheon, Carlyle Group or Blackrock.
