by William Norman Grigg

A society that permits the military to take willing mothers away from newborns and send them into battle is nearly ready to force that role on unwilling mothers as well.

Writing in American Opinion magazine (a precursor to "The New American") more than 30 years ago, former California Congressman John G. Schmitz predicted that one consequence of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) would be the conscription of women into the military. Indeed, some of the ERAıs most militant backers considered that prospect a selling point.

"The equal rights amendment would make voluntary, as well as compulsory, military service available to women and men on the same basis," declared New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug, a radical Marxist and founder of the modern feminist movement. Writing in the April 1971 Yale Law Review, Professor Thomas Emerson, another radical ERA proponent, insisted that exempting women from the draft would be intolerably "sexist":
 

Such obvious differential treatment for women as exemption from the draft, exclusion from the service academies, and more restrictive standards for enlistment will have to be brought into conformity with the Amendmentıs basic prohibition of sex discrimination.... Under the ERA, the Womenıs Army Corps would be abolished.... Women will serve in all kinds of units, and they will be eligible for combat duty....
 

Thus Rep. Schmitz was hardly an alarmist when he warned that under the ERA, the federal government would have "not merely the Œright,ı but the Œconstitutional obligationı Š to snatch our daughters into the Army, with all that would imply even now, when we at least maintain separate womenıs units and do not set the women to driving tanks or clearing minefields...."

Despite the death of the ERA in 1982, much of Schmitzıs prediction has come to pass. Women who volunteer for military service are subject to stop-loss orders. Following the first Gulf War in 1991, Congress relaxed many of the restrictions on women in combat. As a result, noted the January 4 Miami Herald, women personnel in the second Gulf War "have participated more extensively in combat in Iraq than in any previous war in U.S. history. Theyıve taken roles nearly inconceivable just a decade or two ago ‹ flying fighter jets and attack helicopters, patrolling streets armed with machine guns and commanding units composed mostly of male soldiers. Seven female soldiers have died in combat."

In the 1991 Gulf War, for the first time in our nationıs history, mothers were called away to war, albeit for service away from the front lines. In the sequel, mothers who leave children behind find themselves in the thick of combat. Many of the female soldiers involved in the current conflict are single mothers who leave their children in the care of grandparents or friends; such was the case with Lori Piestewa, who was killed in the same ambush in which Jessica Lynch was seriously injured.

In many other instances, children in two-soldier families are left temporarily (at best) orphaned when both parents are called up. Twenty-three-year-old Sgt. Erin Edwards, a commanderıs aide in the 4th Infantry Division in Tikrit, "left her 3-year-old son and infant daughter with her in-laws because her husband serves in the Army in South Korea," noted an AP dispatch. "I would love to be at home with my kids, but Iım doing this for them," commented Edwards of her children. "I wouldnıt want to do anything else."

Simone Holcomb of Colorado Springs, who like her husband Vaughn is in the Army, would rather have spent time with her children ‹ but wasnıt initially given the choice. When she and Vaughn were both called up for service in Iraq, their seven children were left in the care of Vaughnıs mother and ex-wife. After the couple was called to serve their country abroad, Vaughnıs ex-wife filed for custody of the three daughters they had prior to the divorce.

After Vaughn and Simone were granted an emergency leave to contest the claim, a judge ruled that one of them must remain behind to care for the children. It was decided that Vaughn would return to his tank platoon, and Simone ‹ defying an order to return to Iraq ‹ would remain behind. She was given an administrative punishment and threatened with criminal charges for going AWOL. Eventually Simone was taken off active duty and quietly reassigned to the National Guard without further punishment.

The Holcomb familyıs predicament prefigures what we can expect if advocates of a revived draft prevail. Radical feminists of Abzugıs loathsome ilk supported conscription as a way of forcibly reconfiguring society. Although feminism reverently invokes "freedom of choice," it, like every other variant of collectivism, ultimately aims to enhance the power of the state at the expense of liberty. Feminismıs chief target is the conventional family, particularly the increasingly embattled role of traditional mother.

"No woman should be authorized to stay home to raise her children," insisted feminist "foremother" Simone de Beauvoir. "Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women would make that one."

A society that permits the military to take willing mothers away from newborns and send them into battle is nearly ready to force that role on unwilling mothers as well.

 
     originally published
  American Opinion Publishing
     "The New American"