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Notes -
This comparison describes pregnancy from the inside in the most visceral possible terms, but then describes the draft from the outside as "only a 0.5–1.8% death risk."
But the horror of conscription is not exhausted by your chance of being killed. Being drafted means the state seizes your body, removes your freedom, ships you away from your family, subjects you to total institutional discipline, and may order you to kill strangers, watch friends be dismembered, be shelled, step on mines, burn, drown, lose limbs, suffer brain injury, be captured, tortured, or come home with permanent psychological damage and moral injury. It also means you may be forced to participate in acts you find evil under threat of prison or execution.
So I don't disagree with you that forced pregnancy is horrific. But I'd argue that conscription still comes out handily ahead as the most extreme violation of bodily autonomy states have ever imposed, ahead of mandated pregnancies if they were to be implemented.
I feel like the slapfight over the comparative suffering of forced pregnancy (on average) versus forced conscription is emerging as a dead-end - partly because we naturally underweight suffering that applies only to other people,, but also because I was trying to argue that forced pregnancy is a qualitatively different and morally reprehensible category of atrocity, similar to forms of intimate violation that are also off-limits for the state to impose on male draftees (like institutionalized rape or brain implants or invasive medical experimentation). You can squint and describe any unwanted experience as a "violation of bodily autonomy," but there's a meaningful difference. Spartan-style "all draftees owe their CO two rounds of bottoming" would never fly as official policy, even if the colonel promises he'll be gentle and make it fun.
Can I follow up, though, on this point?
On one level, I fully agree that this would be horrible to be asked to do - less the physical risk of severe injury in defense of those you love (which women should also be willing to do), but certainly the moral injury part. On the other hand, I also feel as though "Aggression and physical violence are very wrong, and harm the perpetrators as much as the victims" is a surprisingly feminist talking point? (Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too!)
If most men really find it horrific to be asked to do violence, risk injury and physically harm or kill enemies, how do we account for the fact that they voluntarily spend hours and $$$ fantasizing about this in videogames, or that Fight Club remains a middle-aged male fantasy, or that little boys find ways to make toys violent and play at injuring others? "They can't insult us like that, let's get our weapons and go fuck them up" is like the purest young man's instinct ever: in general, one of the most consistent behaviors among men everywhere, from Papua New Guinea to downtown LA to ancient Greece, is their spontaneous formation of violence gangs to do organized lethal violence on other people. As I pointed out below, the existence of war itself suggests a strong revealed preference of men to perform warfare, because these things are very expensive and it sure as hell isn't women organizing them.
So, say we accept as true your claim that for a man, being made to fight physically alongside other men, to risk injury and hurt and kill enemies is a horrifying, extreme violation, the worst thing imaginable. Then why do y'all so consistently and avidly seek out this experience? That's a genuine question, not a gotcha: I really would love a male perspective on the question.
(The parallel spontaneous instinct in many women is for taking care of small children, I guess. You could readily get approval for draconian legislation drafting women into the Baby and Toddler Minding Corps. But virtually no little girls have a parallel draw toward experiencing physical pregnancy or going into labor.)
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