By rescinding abortion travel reimbursements, the Pentagon is placing politics over the well-being of service members, undermining both their healthcare access and military readiness.
Seeking to leave no stone unturned in the national war on abortion, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth late last month quietly rescinded a Biden-era policy providing for leave time and a travel stipend for service members and family members who, as a result of Dobbs, had to cross state lines to obtain an abortion or other reproductive healthcare because it was banned or unavailable where they were stationed. (The initial change on Jan. 29 meant travel was no longer covered for abortion nor fertility treatments, but in a follow-up memo dated Feb. 4, the Pentagon reinstated its reimbursements policy for travel for fertility treatments only.)
According to a Department of Defense (DOD) memo, the revocation of the travel policy was necessitated by Trump’s Jan. 24 executive order, Enforcing the Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of federal funding for “elective” abortions.
This determination flies in the face of a 2022 opinion from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel concluding that existing federal funding restrictions were limited to the “direct provision of abortions” and did not bar expenditures for “indirect or ancillary expenses,” such as transportation.
In a 2022 memo, “Access to Reproductive Health Care,” then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made clear that the new travel policy was essential to counter the impact of Dobbs on service members and their families stationed in abortion-hostile states. As he explained, they were now forced to navigate an array of “practical effects,” such as longer travel times, additional time off from work and increased expenses in order to access needed reproductive healthcare—which he said “qualify as unusual, extraordinary, or emergency circumstances… [that] will interfere with military’s ability to “recruit, retain, and maintain the readiness of a highly qualified force.”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) immediately launched a relentless attack on the abortion travel policy, which he claimed was in the service of Biden’s plan to convert the military into “a hub for woke Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training, gender transition surgeries, and Critical Race Theory.” Taking matters into his own hands, Tuberville protested what he claimed was the radical transformation of the Pentagon into “Planned Parenthood 2.0” by placing an extremely rare procedural hold on the ability of senators to vote on hundreds of pending military nominations and promotions.
While Tuberville celebrated Hegseth’s blow against the “poisonous, woke ideology” that had “infiltrated the military over the past four years” so that it could again take up its rightful role of a “lethal, killing machine,” Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Jean Shaheen (D-N.H.), a top member of the U.S. Senate Arms Services Committee, have spearheaded the congressional opposition to this regressive move.
We ask our servicewomen to put their lives on the line while serving across the globe to protect our country. They shouldn’t have to risk their lives while stationed in a state with severe abortion bans like Texas or Florida.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.)
Of critical importance in their forceful pushback is the stark reality that service members “have no control over where they are stationed” or over which state laws will “govern their bodies,” according to Shaheen.
Sherrill said the issue is “deeply personal”: She was stationed in Texas and Florida during her time in the military, where she “wouldn’t have had healthcare if I were stationed today,” and her daughter is currently in the Navy.
“We ask our servicewomen to put their lives on the line while serving across the globe to protect our country,” said Sherrill. “They shouldn’t have to risk their lives while stationed in a state with severe abortion bans like Texas or Florida.”
Having previously gone “toe-to-toe with Senator Tuberville and House Republicans” over earlier attempts to repeal the travel policy, she committed to “take the fight to President Donald Trump and Secretary Hegseth” over this ill-conceived move that “will endanger the health of our servicewomen [and] relegate women to second-class citizens in our armed forces.”
Blasting the decision to rescind the travel policy as “abhorrent,” Sheehan, joined by 18 of her colleagues on Senate Armed Services Committee and the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, released a statement criticizing the rescission of the travel policy for sending an extremist “message to our servicewomen—who make up more than 17 percent of our military’s active duty—that they are not as valuable as their male counterparts,” particularly when we are “facing military recruitment and retention challenges.” Rather than devaluing servicewomen as the administration has done, we must “do all we can do to assure those who answer the call to serve America that we will do everything in our power to support them and their families,” the senators said.
While this attack on the abortion rights of service members has not generated the same kind of media attention that other antiabortion initiatives have, vocal opposition has not been limited to lawmakers. In a press release, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America insisted that “[t]hose who are serving and sacrificing for us deserve so much more” than this “wrongheaded and out of touch” change in policy which “should offend us all.”
