Like a herpetic lesion, the godawful idea of drafting women keeps coming back up among our elected representatives. And each time, we’re obliged to apply an antiviral ointment of common sense and decency to it.

The notion reared itself again recently in the once-proud Senate Armed Services Committee, where it appears in the committee’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025 that would have women register for the draft. Yep, it’s right there on page 3 — the third bullet under “Strengthening [sic] the Joint Force and Defense Workforce,” which states, “Amends the Military Selective Service Act to require the registration of women for Selective Service.”

Why? we ask.

Setting aside the basic evolutionary psychological argument for a moment — the argument that men and women are subject to the physical and psychological predispositions that encourage us to have babies together and are therefore inclined to mission-compromising behavior when they’re grouped together — we must again stress that men are, on average, bigger, stronger, and faster than women, and that we have denser bones and thicker skulls and are therefore less susceptible to injury than women.

Yes, yes, say the civilizational nihilists, but Israel drafts its women!

Well, yes, Israel does draft its women. But that’s because Israel arguably needs to draft its women. Israel, unlike the United States, is a tiny country surrounded by the sea on one side and existential threats everywhere else. Whereas Israel is a country of around nine million people, the United States has some 335 million people — which means that we have 75 million or so men of military age. Furthermore, our neighbors are Canada and Mexico — not Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria (no offense, but hey).

As for the rest of the “Israel does it” argument, here’s how the once-thoughtful David French explained the situation eight years ago:

It is true that women fought as part of the Haganah, the Jewish militia that defended Jewish settlements during the struggle for survival prior to and following World War II. But, as outlined in a comprehensive paper for the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, this policy — born of desperate necessity as Jewish citizens defended their homes and villages from genocidal assaults — also showed the limits of gender-integrated units. Mixed-gender units had higher casualty rates, and Haganah commanders stopped using women in assault forces because “physically girls could not run as well — and if they couldn’t run fast enough, they could endanger the whole unit, so they were put in other units.”

The Haganah, to be clear, is different from the Israel Defense Forces, which are now doing the fighting and killing and dying in Gaza.

The NDAA bill was approved by a whopping 22-3 margin, which makes us wonder where the Republicans are in all this, and what the heck ranking member Roger Wicker is thinking. Said Wicker: “This bill shows there is bipartisan support for doing more to maintain deterrence and protect American interests. I am encouraged that many of my colleagues have joined me in the conversation about the need to invest more in our national defense. I look forward to discussing the peace through strength vision I have laid out in the months to come. This year’s NDAA results are a testament to the tradition of bipartisanship, vigorous debate, and good working order on which this committee prides itself.”

That’s all well and good, Roger, but why register our women for the draft?

Thankfully, it appears that not all is lost among our lawmakers. “You can go straight to hell,” posted Texas Republican Congressman and father of a daughter Chip Roy. “Over my dead body.”

Joining Roy in disgust is Utah Senator Mike Lee, who added, “I’m with Chip Roy — this will happen over my dead body.” Given that the bill is now headed to the whole Senate for consideration, Lee will likely have a chance to present the prospect of his corpse to his bloodless colleagues.

When the NDAA’s draft language came up for consideration in 2022, Republicans had enough steel in their spines to beat it back. Said Missouri Senator Josh Hawley: “Forcing our daughters, mothers, wives, and sisters to fight our wars is wrong. We should celebrate the women who have volunteered to serve our country and thank the women who played a vital role in defending America at every point in our nation’s history. But volunteering is different than being forced to serve, and that’s why it was removed from last year’s NDAA.”

Hawley is right. There’s a difference between an all-volunteer fighting force and a conscripted one. The former wants to fight and is therefore more cohesive than the latter.

The argument against women in the military isn’t much different than the argument against the likes of Lia Thomas competing against Riley Gaines and other women in swimming. It’s unfair, unwise, and grotesque.

Given that Thomas’s recent legal challenge to World Aquatics’ transgender policy was rejected, and his Olympic dreams thereby dashed, perhaps there’s hope after all.

Otherwise, what are we becoming as a nation and as a people?