It was not. It was implemented by Dylan Taylor, an outside contributor who works at a fintech company in North Carolina, and has made it his hobby to submit PRs implementing age verification to all kinds of projects. The systemd maintainer who clicked "merge" (Luca Boccassi) does work at Microsoft.
Sounds like Dylan needs a better hobby.
I would love to understand his motives, because my first impression is not a positive one. This is not freedom-loving behavior of a patriotic US citizen.