Government commission declares women should be eligible for the draft

The members of a congressionally mandated commission is going to recommend to the White House and Congress Tuesday that women should be eligible for the draft, according a report from Politico.

What's happening with this commission?

The 2017 Defense Authorization bill required a commission to study and make recommendations about the issue of making women eligible for the military draft, Politico noted.

The new government report, which Politico said its reporters had seen, says that women should be included in the draft. The 11-member panel presented its findings to the Pentagon on Monday and will make a presentation to staffers from the White House and Congress Tuesday.

The nation's first conscription system was created in 1917 during World War I and, as Congress' legislation said at the time, was based on "the liability to military service of all male citizens," the U.S. Selective Service System notes. More from the SSS:

The law authorized a draft of men between the ages of 21 and 31. A new classification system gave the newly created local boards a set of guidelines to determine which men should be drafted. Total # inducted: 2,810,296

Though no one has been conscripted since the Vietnam War, the law still requires that all American males sign up for the draft at age 18. Men who do not register face punishments ranging from the loss of student loans to fines to prison.

What else?

As Politico noted, the report does not require action by Congress or the Defense Department, but it will make it more likely that lawmakers will draft legislation to include females in the draft for the first time in the draft's more than 100 years of existence.

The report comes just a few years after the Obama administration officially jettisoned policies keeping women out of combat and opened all combat roles to women in December 2015.