According to Destro, reversing the rule would likely now require litigation or perhaps an act of Congress.
For its part the VA explicitly said in its rule on Monday that it “is not subject to the Hyde Amendment,” which it says “addresses federal funds available to the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education in legislation on annual appropriations,” not military spending.
When it comes to providing abortions in states where it is illegal, the VA argues that abortion is “medically necessary and appropriate” for the health of VA beneficiaries and that the “supremacy clause of the United States Constitution prohibits states from restricting federal agencies and their employees acting within the scope of their federal authority from providing abortion services.”
Will this impact U.S. military readiness?
As the U.S. military is undergoing a dramatic shortage of recruits, leading some to label the problem a national “crisis,” Destro said that the military’s abortion policies indicate that it is “more concerned about sex than they are about readiness and weapons.”
“Abortion advocates think that access to abortion paid by government will improve recruiting. It doesn’t,” he said, adding that the “hyper sexualizing” of the military is “destroying the military’s ability to recruit.”
Nonetheless, the military’s new abortion policies received praise from progressive groups such as the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), which celebrated the rule as a “critical action” in a press release published Monday.
Fatima Goss Graves, president of the NWLC, argued in the statement that “access to abortion is necessary for the health and safety of veterans — and for all people — to determine their futures.”
Archbishop Timothy Broglio, head of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, and president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has previously strongly condemned the military’s new abortion policies, saying in an April 2023 letter that they are “morally repugnant” and that they “fail to incorporate basic conscience protections” for military commanders and VA employees.
“To deny the life of a baby in utero is to deny the Incarnation, and thus, the very source of our hope for salvation,” Broglio wrote.
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