WASHINGTON—The United States Senate’s Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) features an amendment to the Military Selective Service Act that would require American women to register for the Selective Service if there were a military draft. 

Heritage’s Vice President of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy Victoria Coates made the following statement: 

“There is no justification to ‘Draft Our Daughters’ for military service. The Senate defense bill’s provision for mandatory registration of all young women for conscription puts 'fairness' over military necessity. It would waste time and resources during a war in order to evaluate and train thousands of draft-age women to find the subset qualified for the requirements of military service. Including women in the selective service is pointless virtue-signaling from those who believe the military should be a social experiment and not a lethal fighting force. 

“Women are welcome to serve in the all-volunteer force and have done so with honor and distinction. Congress mandated that women be allowed in the military full-time in 1948 and they have been able to attend the military service academies for nearly fifty years. There are numerous women who have reached the very highest echelons of leadership as 4-star generals and flag officers. The Senate’s provision does nothing to expand the opportunities for women in today’s military. 

“As the Heritage Foundation has stated before, the current selective service registration system should be shut down. Expanding the mandatory registration requirement to young women will do nothing for national defense should America find itself in a conflict with mass casualties of front-line troops.

“The American people do not support mandatory conscription for our daughters in wartime and neither should their Members of Congress.”