Lehigh Times

WASHINGTON, DC – Following last July 14's vote on the FY24 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a bill to address American national security that has historically been overwhelmingly bipartisan, Congresswoman Susan Wild released the following statement:

“As one of the most bipartisan members of Congress, I have engaged in compromise across the aisle and voted to pass the NDAA each year since my first term to fund our military, address the needs of our servicemembers, and protect our national security. However, this year’s bill is nothing like those—it was hijacked by an extreme faction of the GOP that is intent on pursuing their goal of banning abortion nationwide and playing politics with our national security.

“I cannot, and will never, compromise on a woman’s freedom to control her own body. This bill undermines female servicemembers’ access to reproductive health care at the expense of our military readiness. It is a slap in the face to our female servicemembers—women who defend American freedom every single day—to tell them that they do not deserve the fundamental freedom to make their own health care decisions. The bill as amended by the extreme GOP also included bogus amendments to fix problems that do not exist and that were inserted only to further their agenda of depriving all Americans of the freedoms that are protected by the very servicemembers whose rights they seek to take away.

“I pushed hard to include in this bill my own bipartisan amendments supporting military mental health and expanding job search assistance for veterans. That’s the kind of work we should be focused on, and I’m deeply angered that extreme D.C. Republicans are holding these necessary resources hostage. Unfortunately, the GOP-controlled rules committee struck down many common sense, bipartisan amendments offered by House Democrats, and instead included only their own amendments, many of which are antithetical to the values of most Americans. To prioritize attacking the reproductive rights of the women who serve our country, above coming together to put our national security and military families first, is anti-freedom, anti-American, and an embarrassing dereliction of our duty to our military and their families.” 

Rep. Wild Standing Up for Female Servicemembers’ Reproductive Freedom

Rep. Wild voted against final passage of the NDAA due to the adoption of Amendment No. 5, which prohibits the Department of Defense (DoD) from providing allowances for travel or transportation for service members to access abortion or fertility care they cannot access through the military, but must seek off base. Federal law already prohibits the Department of Defense from providing abortion services at military treatment facilities, even if servicemembers pay for them out of pocket, and from covering abortion under TRICARE except in cases of rape, incest, or life of the mother—meaning that for decades, female servicemembers have had to travel off base for abortion care and cover high costs themselves.

Following the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Supreme Court decision, 14 states eliminated the right to abortion care, forcing female servicemembers to travel much farther to access this care. Given that many service members are stationed in states with abortion bans, they could be forced to carry a pregnancy to term against their will or face life-risking complications if they are unable to travel out of state. DoD’s most recent policy changes provide allowances for travel and transportation for servicemembers and dependents to travel to the closest medical facility to access abortion or fertility care that they cannot access through the military, a critical protection for the health and economic security of female servicemembers. The extreme GOP Amendment No. 5 takes that away.

Instead of working across the aisle to strengthen our national security, extreme Republican leadership hijacked the decades-long precedent of a bipartisan NDAA to rip away female servicemembers’ freedom to make their own reproductive health care choices. This is yet another example of extremist Republicans prioritizing banning abortion over working to deliver for the American people—and in this case, it comes at the expense of military readiness and national security.

 

Impact By the Numbers:

1. The Military Health System serves approximately 1.62 million women of reproductive age (15-45), including service members, retirees, and their dependents, and more than 2.3 million MHS beneficiaries live in one of the 14 states where abortion is either severely restricted or outright banned.
2. 46 percent of active-duty service women have no access or severely restricted access to abortion care—meaning that roughly half of all women currently serving in America's active-duty military lack the freedom to access a full scope of reproductive health care.
3. As of 2021, there were more than 708,000 DoD civilians in the continental United States, over 250,000 of whom are women. Roughly 275,000 DoD civilians live in states with a full ban or extreme restrictions on access to abortion, and of those civilians, over 81,000 are women. Nearly 43 percent of civilian women employed by DoD will have no access to abortion or will have their access severely curtailed in their state of residence.

Original Source can be found here.