"They Do Need You, Don't They?": Disability, Gender, and Care Work in World War I Conscription Dramas.

This article examines two World War I–era political dramas—Alice Dunbar-Nelson's *Mine Eyes Have Seen* and Sada Cowan's *The State Forbids*—that depict civilian disability within family settings to explore how disability influenced debates about military conscription and national participation in the war. Both plays portray the receipt of draft notices complicated by the presence of disabled siblings, highlighting tensions between familial care responsibilities and patriotic duty amid prevailing eugenic and ableist ideologies. While Dunbar-Nelson’s play, published in the African American NAACP magazine *The Crisis*, foregrounds themes of Black masculinity, solidarity, and an ethics of care that crosses race, gender, and ability lines, Cowan’s pro–birth control drama grapples with reproductive rights but also reflects problematic eugenicist and ableist perspectives, particularly in its portrayal of disability and caregiving as burdensome. The analysis situates these works within broader wartime discourses on citizenship, race, gender, and disability, emphasizing how they reveal both the exclusionary effects of eugenics and the potential for solidarity and critical consciousness among marginalized individuals navigating war-time social and political pressures.