It is the policy that if a service member needs an abortion, they can take time off and have their out-of-state travel costs reimbursed.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently signed an order mandating that the Pentagon cover the costs of any service member’s travel to have an abortion.
On Thursday, Austin revealed that the Pentagon would begin paying for military members and their families out-of-state travel expenses to access abortion services. This new program, like the rest of the Pentagon, will be funded by tax dollars.
“Our Service members and their families are routinely requested to travel or move,” Austin said in a memo announcing the new change. This kind of regulation shouldn’t stand in the way of giving people access to reproductive health care.
Policy changes are in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide in the United States in 1973. After the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that abortion is not a constitutionally protected right, the responsibility for regulating the practice was largely returned to the states.
Thirteen states have now outright prohibited abortion as a result of this ruling. Massive military installations host thousands of active-duty personnel in a few of those areas.
For instance, the state of Texas, where Fort Hood is situated, has just approved a law making abortion illegal. Without including civilian family members of service members, there are more than forty thousand people stationed at the army post.
If the number of states that permit abortion falls below 50, Austin says morale and recruitment may suffer.
“Such repercussions qualify as rare, severe, hardship, or emergency situations for service members and their families,” Austin writes. “They will interfere with our ability to attract, maintain, and sustain the readiness of a highly qualified force.”
As a matter of federal law, abortion services cannot be provided on military sites. Unfortunately, neither Medicare nor the Tricare insurance program created by the Department of Defense to cover service personnel and their families will pay for this.
For this reason, the Defense Department issued a new regulation allowing service members to apply for travel allowances if they or a dependent must cross state lines to access abortion care. In order to get an abortion, military members might obtain an administrative leave of absence from their responsibilities instead of taking an unpaid leave of absence.