Did American Military Veterans have the option of "My body, my choice?"
At the risk of being called a misogynist on this Veterans Day, I’d like ya’ll to think about the pro-abortion alibi, “It’s my body, it’s my choice.”
This is regarded as an absolute truth. It variously parades its self as bodily integrity, body-ownership, reproductive autonomy or self-ownership.
Could men say “My body, my choice,” when they were drafted for military service? Could they have avoided the draft if they had argued that no one can interfere with their “bodily autonomy?”
How many veterans of World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War would be alive if they had successfully insisted that their bodies were sacrosanct, like the unbending pro-choice mavens who proclaim that their autonomy is absolute? How many would not have been maimed? Or suffered Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), what used to be called shell shock?
An ever-shrinking number of Americans didn’t experience or don’t remember the military draft. All men 18 and over had to register with Selective Service. If a draft board—you never knew who was on it—decided you were physically and mentally fit, it was, “Hello, Army.”
You had no “choice.” Your orders would arrive in your mailbox: Report to basic training. There you’d be screamed at. Awoken rudely. You’d shoot. March. Watch the VD movie.
Welcome to a rifle company. It’s in a combat zone, on the front line. They’re shooting at you. You’re supposed to kill. Kill. Kill.
The point is clear, unless you’re a pro-abortion absolutist: The right to controlling your body is not absolute. The law and moral philosophy recognize how the right to control your body can be limited for a higher cause. In the case of the draft, for the cause of national defense.
Can abortion be subject to the same kind of restrictions? Absolutely. At some point during pregnancy, the “thing” growing in the womb is a real person who, as any other person, has certain unalienable rights, most certainly the right to life.
It’s deeply puzzling to me how anyone who claims to be compassionate and morally superior (e.g. liberals and others who support abortion rights) can so easily ignore a fetus’ rights. As if the fetus has not a single right at any time during pregnancy. In the abortion debate in the recent election, I couldn’t find a single pro-abortion argument that responded to the question of a balancing of rights.
Okay, the draft ended in the 1970s after turmoil created by the Vietnam War. But the principle still exists.
Men 18-to-25 must still register for the draft, according to the Selective Service System. Failure to register is a felony punishable by a fine of up to $250,000 and five years imprisonment. Anyone who helps someone to avoid registering is subject to the same penalties. Even illegal immigrant men are legally required to register.
Men must register to be eligible for a number of government benefits, including student financial aid in many states, federal jobs, security clearance for contractors, job training under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act and U.S. citizenship for immigrant men.
Only men are required to register. Women aren’t. That clearly flies in the face of the given wisdom that men and women are equal in all ways. A few efforts have been made to amend the law to include women, but have failed.
In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in 1981 (Rostker v. Goldberg) that registering only men does not violate the Constitution’s due process clause. In the current political environment, I’m not sure that the men-only law would stand a constitutional test.
The issue of absolute bodily control has faded into the fog of time when it comes to men and the military draft. I suspect it’s never raised anymore because it would challenge the claim that women have an absolute right to “My body, my choice.”
Is there any better example of how we have abandoned our obligation to care for every soul than the abortion debate?