The Draft: Girls and Boys Together

THE DRAFT Girls and Boys Together

Holy Amelia Bloomer! The draft, says Manhattan Attorney Stephen Fine, is illegal because it calls up boys and ignores girls. Seeking to quash a draft-evasion indictment against James St. Clair, a 19-year-old Fordham University undergraduate and antiwar activist, Fine startled Federal Judge Dudley Bonsai in New York City by arguing that the present law makes "an invidious discrimination based upon sex."

Draft girls? Why not? There are already 37,000 women volunteers serving in the U.S. armed forces, including more than 800 in Viet Nam. Draft Director Lewis B. Hershey, 74, crusty bugbear of millions of draft-age males, recalls an attempt to draft nurses during World War II that was stymied by Congress. Anthropologist Margaret Mead favors conscription of all youth for public service and sees no reason why girls should be exempt. The present draft, she complains, "sets girls and young women apart as if they did not exist."

Nor can the champions of equal rights for women cavil. In 1964, granddaughters of the original suffragettes managed to insert a clause into the Civil Rights Act forbidding job discrimination based on sex. But draftable females were less than ecstatic. "Now that would put real meaning into Uncle Sam's saying 'I Want You,' " noted Manhattan Model Mason Susanne Boyd, 23. "The old lecher!"