OPINION – The insane leftist overreaction to the reversal of Roe v Wade continues with Joe Biden’s woke Pentagon now providing leave and taxpayer funding for female troops wanting to go out of state to murder their unborn children.
Despite the ready availability of contraceptives throughout the United States, and the availability of abortions in almost all states up to 10 weeks, and with exceptions for rape, incest, and danger to the life of the mother beyond that, Biden’s DoD thinks it is somehow necessary for the American taxpayer to pay for travel to get abortions.
This is outrageous.
And far too many Americans, conservative or just plain reasonable, are too cowed by the media and the left to say anything or question the insanity.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who has proven to be an absolute embarrassment, announced in a memo how the Pentagon, and taxpayers, will begin paying for female troops and their family members to travel for abortions, under the guise of diabolical leftist doublespeak called ‘access to reproductive healthcare.’
The Pentagon memo repeatedly avoids using the term abortion in the memo and replaces it with the innocuous-sounding ‘reproductive healthcare.’
“The practical effects of recent changes are that significant numbers of service members and their families may be forced to travel greater distances, take more time off from work, and pay more out-of-pocket expenses to receive reproductive health care,” the secretary wrote.
According to Biden’s Pentagon, post-Roe abortion restrictions are hurting recruiting and retention, which is totally unproven and helps divert for the Pentagon’s wokeness being a primary factor in scaring away potential recruits from traditional upbringings.
As the DoD memo notes:
Under federal law, DOD funds and facilities may only be used to perform abortions where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term or in a case in which the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest. The most recent statistics show that between 2016 and 2021, a total of 91 abortions were performed in military medical treatment facilities.
That’s a relatively small number. Still, Austin says that:
The department is examining this [Supreme Court] decision closely and evaluating our policies to ensure we continue to provide seamless access to reproductive health care as permitted by federal law.
So, despite the fact that DoD already provides abortions in case of danger to the life of the mother, and provides a slew of contraceptives, and guidance, for its male and female troops, Austin believes the Pentagon and taxpayers should pay for these female troops and their families to travel out of state to get abortions beyond those rules.
This, even though federal law prohibits abortions outside the above-noted parameters.
As National Review writer under the pen name Robert M. Berg notes:
To begin with, there is no reason for the DOD to issue any statement regarding Dobbs. The DOD needs to adjust exactly zero policies to comply with this ruling. It does not affect service members. Yet our DOD leadership could not resist weighing in on a political issue, while taking a swipe at one of the three branches of government enshrined in the Constitution that the military is sworn to uphold.
The DOD has no business reviewing and commenting on Supreme Court decisions. So why do it?
The implication is so that it can find ways to provide abortions to American service members, in clear violation of U.S. law and against the intent of the U.S. Congress. If Congress wants to weigh back into this and provide funds for abortion, then that is its job. It most certainly is not the job of the DOD to question one branch of government and look to circumvent another.
The writer, an active-duty combat-arms officer with 20-plus years of service, adds:
Indeed, following Austin’s comments, the DOD had to issue an official response clarifying its policy. The official memorandum put out by Undersecretary of Defense Gilbert R. Cisneros Jr. softly walked back Austin’s initial statement. The opening paragraph of the memorandum references Secretary Austin’s statement and pretends to echo his message.
However, the first factual statement the memo references is the federal law that restricts DOD funding of abortions. The majority of the memo rehashes that the Dobbs case does not in fact affect military service members. So why even issue a memo at all? That is made clear near the end, when the memo takes veiled political shots at the Supreme Court and issues a statement of intent to try to find ways to circumvent Congress by funding service members’ abortions.
The memo states, “the implications of the Supreme Court’s decision are complicated and must be evaluated against various state laws, together with the views of the Department of Justice.” This statement seems wholly unnecessary, as the entirety of the rest of the memo keeps saying no policies need to be changed. Again, then why do we need a review?
The writer concludes:
Such actions [only] erode the confidence the American public has in our military and damage our ability to field an effective fighting force. It is no coincidence that, the more political the DOD becomes, the more it must deal with issues such as falling respect for current military service members and difficulty recruiting new ones.
Very well said Mr. Berg.
I can only pray Congress will investigate and reverse this new policy once the GOP takes control of the House, and possibly Senate, in a mon
Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of Great America News Desk.
