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An estimated 80,000 female, active duty service members are stationed in states where their access to abortion has been restricted by state laws enacted since the overturn of Roe v. Wade in June. To give back some of that access, the Pentagon has decided to provide leave and reimburse travel costs for troops who have to go out of state to have an abortion.
This move is one of a handful of policies the Defense Department unveiled in a memo signed Thursday by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, including privacy protections for service members seeking reproductive health care and assurances for military health care providers in situations where states might retaliate against them for performing abortions under federal law.
“I am committed to the Department taking all appropriate action, within its authority and consistent with applicable federal law, as soon as possible to ensure that our service members and their families can access reproductive health care and our health care providers can operate effectively,” Austin wrote.
Military health providers and insurance are governed by two federal restrictions: Federal money cannot be used to pay for abortions ― except in the case of rape, incest or threat to the mother’s life ― and abortions outside those parameters cannot be performed by military providers, preventing service members from paying out-of-pocket for procedures done by on-base doctors.
The services already provide nonchargeable leave, which doesn’t come out of vacation time, to troops who have to travel for abortions allowed under federal regulations if they aren’t able to obtain services through their on-base doctor or in a local, private clinic.
This scenario has become more and more likely, as not every military treatment facility has a doctor who performs abortions, and states like Ohio, Oklahoma and Alabama have no exceptions in their abortion statutes for rape or incest.
So if a service member or dependent sought an abortion in one of these cases, but they’re assigned to an installation without services and the procedure is banned for them in that state, they would be able to have the entire cost of the trip and the procedure covered by military health insurance.
This new policy would expand the leave and travel reimbursement to all abortions, requiring a service member to pay only for the procedure itself.
Even further, the policy would extend to multiple reproductive services, including troops who might need to go out of state to access in vitro fertilization treatment.
This heads off a post-Roe concern of some providers that the decision could prohibit one of the core steps of IVF: Destruction of unused embryos, or destruction of embryos found to have genetic abnormalities and thus are not implanted.
Many U.S. states now prohibit women from terminating a pregnancy where a condition is found that is incompatible with life, and there are fears that those laws could be applied to lab-grown embryos with the same conditions.
