Kylie Cheung
Fri, September 15, 2023
Photo: Getty Images
House Republicans overseeing the Veterans Affairs Committee are threatening to subpoena the Department of Veterans Affairs (or the VA) for more comprehensive data on abortions the department provided in the last year. The VA implemented a policy after the fall of Roe v. Wade to provide abortions to veterans in select cases. In a letter obtained by Military.com this week, committee Chairman Mike Bost (R-Ill.) and Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), who chairs the committee’s health sub-committee, call out the VA for offering abortions in cases when veterans suffered from mental but not physical health concerns—thereby overstepping the purview of the VA abortion policy, in their view. This, even as veterans struggle with PTSD and other mental conditions.
The VA’s policy, implemented in September 2022, offers abortion services to veterans who are impregnated by rape or in cases when the life or health of the mother is endangered by pregnancy. (The VA says this is in accordance with the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funds from covering abortion except in the aforementioned emergency cases.) Shortly after, Republicans on the House VA Committee requested detailed data on abortions provided by the VA on a quarterly basis, which they say the VA has failed to hand over. The VA holds that providing this data would violate veterans’ privacy and even allow the committee to identify individual abortion seekers, per Military.com’s reporting.
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The VA previously shared abortion-related data from the period between last September through this April, per Military.com. According to the report, the department provided 54 abortions: 44 arose from cases of threats to the health of the pregnant person, two arose from cases in which the mother’s life was at risk, and eight stemmed from rape-induced pregnancies. (Given high rates of rape within the military, the VA’s policy of providing abortions for rape-related pregnancies carries particular urgency.)
These two House Republicans’ threat over the VA’s abortion policy comes as, in the Senate, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) has been throwing a national security-threatening tantrum over the Department of Defense’s abortion policy. Since March, the military has covered costs of abortion care and abortion-related travel for military members, some of whom are required to live on bases in states that ban abortion. In retaliation, Tuberville has blocked promotions for some 300 military members, claiming the military’s policy is somehow undemocratic and “communist” because Congress didn’t vote on it, though departments in the executive branch establish their own internal policies all the time.
This uproar from Republicans in Congress over abortion policy within the military—hardly a bastion for progressive ideals—truly encapsulates how deep the party’s rot on this issue goes.
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