What happens to the right to privacy when people talk about the draft?

[hedgehog]

If a woman's right to control her own body covers the right to have an abortion, why don't I have a right to control my own body by keeping it out of the military or alternate mandetory service? It seems that staying out of situations in which other people are shooting at me is the essence of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Even without a shooting war, basic training is designed to destroy the individual's sense of self and make each person part of the unit.

[valerief]

1. How would the people who run the world get all the money and

play games with the little people? Duh. You're not thinking. We are here for their amusement.

[itsmesgd]

2. you think that we still have rights?

[SoCalDem]

3. "Privacy" is a myth

It has been for a long time.
The only place you have any expectation of privacy is inside your own home ...and lately, not even there :)_

[Warren Stupidity]

4. Patriot act scrapped that quaint notion. nt.

[eallen]

5. The Constitution gives Congress the power "to raise and support armies."

And "to provide and maintain a Navy." It's interesting that Congress actually has broader power with regard to the last, since there is no limitation, as there is on the first, that "no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years." Neither clause explicitly states that Congress may institute a draft as part of that. Nonetheless, a draft was first used in the War of 1812, and as late at the Vietnam War. The draft was challenged on 13th amendment grounds during WW I, and the Supreme Court ruled for the Constitutionality of the draft in Arver v. United States.

While staying out of harm's way is certainly a decision as important and personal as not giving birth, the legal difference between these issues is primarily that the government has a vital interest in defense of the nation, and so the draft is seen as part of Congress's power to raise armies. Complaints against the draft are greatest with unpopular and unwise wars. But that's a political issue, not a Constitutional one.

[yewberry]

6. There is no basic training

for most national service work.

I work in a public school as my primary placement, and I'm in my second year of national service. We don't get a heckuva lot of shootings. Poking and shoving, yes, but not much in the way of shooting.