Senate Votes to Repeal Ban on Abortions for Military Women

If you are a woman in uniform, get ready for a breath of fresh air.

RH Reality Check reports that Senator Roland Burris (D-IL) introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would repeal the ban on abortion services for servicemembers (and presumably dependents, although that is missing from this conversation). The measure was voted in by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Currently, a woman who uses TRICARE (military insurance) is barred from gaining any abortion services in military facilities, even if she uses her own money, unless she can prove rape or incest (oh, but you gotta pay for that one!), or if her life is in imminent danger. That last one can be a doozie to prove, and the medical staff that get to determine what the definition of life-endangerment is can make it pretty damned narrow, but it does happen.

A woman seeking an abortion after being raped loses the option of Restricted Reporting (if she is uniformed), which permits her to confidentially get treatment for sexual assault without being required to press charges against her attacker or be identified to her chain of command. Or, she might be forced to report her crime in order to prove rape, and then face the possibility of not being believed. This strips her of her privacy, something the crime has already done.

A woman stationed (or attached to a servicemember stationed) overseas currently has to procure abortion services at an off-post facility, and if she is in an anti-choice country, she would have secure travel to a place that provides abortion services, at her own expense. Regardless of the status of choice in the country, a woman would have to request leave, possibly disclosing her private medical information in order to obtain it.

As Vania Leveille from the ACLU says, "Allowing American servicewomen to use their own private funds to obtain abortion care at U.S. military facilities is fundamental and should never have been questioned in the first place." It is unconscionable to refuse to allow a woman to procure a safe and legal medical procedure under U.S. law in a hospital that is run by the country that she or her family is currently giving their lives in some capacity to protect, certainly when she is willing to pay for it out of her own damn pocket.

We have allowed our government to play ping pong with women's health for too long. It needs to stop. We need to tell Congress that it is time that military women and dependents be allowed to receive all medical care.

Photo credit: infomatique