LOWELL — U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas, an outspoken voice in Congress for women’s rights, said women should automatically register for the military draft as young men are required to do on their 18th birthdays.

Tsongas said it is another step toward equal military roles for both genders.

“Given the nature of war today, women are virtually always in the fight,” Tsongas said Wednesday in a meeting with The Sun’s editorial board.

Tsongas, a Lowell Democrat who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, has previously spoken out about sexual assault in the military and in 2012 co-founded the Military Sexual Assault Prevention Caucus.

She has also pushed for policies enabling servicewomen to breast-feed and for military body armor and other specialized equipment designed specifically for women.

Tsongas cited a comment she said resonated with her: that a military cannot be the best in the world if it keeps out half of the country’s population — women — from combat roles.

Equal roles in the military was one of several topics Tsongas covered in the hourlong newspaper meeting, including the presidential race and a recent trip with a delegation to Japan.

Tsongas said she was “dismayed at the discourse” in the presidential race, particularly on the Republican side.

“Some of it has descended to the high school schoolyard, if that,” said Tsongas, who experienced a presidential race first-hand with her late husband, Senator Paul Tsongas, who ran for the 1992 Democratic nomination. She’s endorsed Hillary Clinton in this race.

Tsongas said she remained confident that the government’s checks-and-balances system will keep any one official from pushing through radical changes. In fact, she said, many of her colleagues are expected to not run for re-election, including moderates who are frustrated by gridlock and tea party-affiliated candidates surprised at the necessity of compromise.

“You don’t govern by fiat, you simply don’t,” she said.

No matter which party wins the White House in November, Tsongas said the widening economic gap between rich and poor must be addressed.

With her recent trip to Japan, Tsongas returned to the country where she spent her high school years while her father was stationed in Tokyo for the Air Force. The relationship between the United States and Japan remains important, she said, particularly amid the United States’ pivot to Asia and worries about China’s growing pull in the region.

Of the American military base in Okinawa, she said, “there’s a unique strategic opportunity in being based there.”

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