The outgoing president of the United States supports requiring women to register for Selective Service when they turn 18 — and is the first president to endorse universal draft registration since Jimmy Carter in the late ’70s, as an article in USA Today on Friday morning makes clear.

“As old barriers for military service are being removed, the administration supports — as a logical next step — women registering for the Selective Service,” Ned Price, a spokesman for Obama’s National Security Council, told the publication.

The White House had previously stayed neutral on the controversy — but took a position in a statement to USA Today on Thursday.

Obama emphasized he still supports an all-volunteer service, so the timing of his support “makes it mostly symbolic, coming in the final weeks of his presidency and the day before the House will vote on a defense policy bill that strips a Senate-passed provision to add women to Selective Service,” noted the USA Today article.

“Instead, the compromise version now calls only for a commission to study two related issues: Whether women should be included in Selective Service, and whether the Selective Service system itself should be abolished.”

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