WASHINGTON — The Protection Division will not reimburse service members for journey out of state to get reproductive well being care, together with abortions and fertility remedies, in accordance with a brand new memo.
The directive signed this week eliminates a hardly ever used Biden administration coverage enacted in October 2022, after the Supreme Court docket overturned Roe v. Wade and extra states started to impose elevated abortion restrictions.
Signed on Wednesday by Jeffrey Register, the director of the Pentagon’s human sources division, the memo merely reveals purple strains crossing out the earlier regulation and gives no different steerage.
Requested if service members would nonetheless be allowed time without work to journey at their very own expense, the division had no rapid reply.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., a member of the Senate Armed Companies Committee, known as the coverage change “shameful.”
“Our service members go wherever they should with a view to bravely serve our nation — and since President Trump’s extremist Supreme Court docket overturned Roe, the place they and their households are stationed fairly actually dictates their entry to crucial reproductive care,” Warren mentioned in a press release. “Now, Trump is popping his again on our servicemembers — and our servicewomen specifically — to attain political factors. It’s shameful, and can solely make our troops and our nation much less protected.”
Then-Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin instituted the coverage in October 2022 to make sure that troops who have been assigned to states the place abortions or different forms of well being care reminiscent of IVF remedy have been not offered may nonetheless entry these providers.
The Protection Division on Friday was unable to say what number of instances the reimbursement coverage was used, or the prices. However final March, officers mentioned it had been utilized by service members or their dependents simply 12 instances from June to December 2023. And the whole price was roughly $40,000 to cowl transportation, lodging and meals.
The coverage didn’t cowl the price of abortions, and it’s not clear how lots of the 12 journeys have been for abortions or different sort of reproductive well being care, reminiscent of IVF remedy. That particular medical data is protected by well being privateness regulation.
In his memo on the time, Austin mentioned service members and their households have been nervous they might not get equal entry to well being care, together with abortions. And he famous that service members who usually should transfer for varied missions or coaching can be pressured to journey farther, take extra time without work work and pay extra to entry reproductive well being care.
The issue, Austin mentioned, would create extraordinary hardship and “intervene with our means to recruit, retain, and preserve the readiness of a extremely certified drive.”
He ordered the division to permit troops and dependents, in keeping with federal regulation, to take time without work and use official journey to get to different states for reproductive care not accessible domestically. That care contains in vitro fertilization and different being pregnant aids that additionally will not be accessible shut by.
Underneath federal regulation, Protection Division medical amenities can carry out abortions solely when the lifetime of the pregnant individual is in danger or in circumstances of rape or incest, and people cases have been extraordinarily uncommon. Based on the division, there have been 91 abortions carried out in army medical amenities between 2016 and 2021.