In the military, service members don’t have much control over where they live or travel. That means they could be stationed on a base in a state that essentially bans abortion and have no access to reproductive care when they need it.
That’s why U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III last October directed all branches of the military to set up policies offering a pregnant service person administrative leave (separate from their regular leave) to obtain an abortion as well as travel and transportation allowances when reproductive health care is unavailable in the local area where the person is stationed. The new policies went into effect earlier this year. (Expense allowances are also available for people who must travel a far distance to get fertility treatments not covered by the military.)
Austin announced the changes several months after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, noting in a memo that service members might be forced to travel greater distances and pay more out-of-pocket expenses for reproductive health care. Those conditions, he wrote in a memo, qualified as “unusual, extraordinary, hardship or emergency circumstances” that could make it difficult to recruit and retain a highly qualified force.
Now, just months after these policies went into effect, House Republicans want to undo the smart and sensible Defense Department policy offering travel expenses to service members who have no choice but to travel as far as out of state to access reproductive health care.
Last week, the House narrowly passed its version of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, which includes an amendment from Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, halting the Pentagon policy paying for travel costs. In addition to declaring the policy part of the Biden administration’s “radical and immoral pro-abortion agenda,” Jackson argued that it violates the federal law — known as the Hyde Amendment — that prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion.
The cruelly unjust Hyde Amendment has been in place since 1977, depriving poor women of equal access to abortion. Among other things, it keeps federal dollars that fund Medicaid from being used to help poor people get abortion care. It’s also the reason why pregnant service people can’t get an abortion at a military hospital in any state — unless the person’s health is endangered.
Jackson argues that federal dollars being spent on travel is the same as spending federal dollars on abortion.
That’s absurd. Reimbursement for travel to get abortion care is not the same as covering the bill for the procedure. Service members still must pay out of pocket for the abortion. The Biden policy reasonably and legally allows a service member to travel off base — and be reimbursed — for an urgent health matter that cannot be resolved on base and can’t even be resolved in the state where the base is located.
But the GOP is just using this bill to attack policies it derides as “woke.” It also passed amendments to the bill blocking diversity initiatives and ending coverage of transition surgeries and hormone treatments for transgender troops.
Attacking the travel allowance is nothing more than grandstanding by opponents of abortion rights in the House. It’s disrespectful to the women in the military who serve their country and often risk their lives. How dare a member of Congress stand in the way of the military trying to help a service person travel to get healthcare they need.
Let’s hope this attempt to undo this policy will have little chance of making it into the final defense authorization bill. The Senate version of the bill, being debated this week, keeps the travel allowance policy in place. A House-Senate conference committee will have to resolve the differences between the two bills. It’s imperative that the Senate and the Biden administration block the move to erase this policy. That’s the least that the Pentagon can do for the health of its troops.
