A controversial army coverage that enables service members to be reimbursed for journey in the event that they or a member of the family need to exit of state for reproductive well being care — together with abortions — was used simply 12 occasions from June to December final yr, the Pentagon mentioned Tuesday.
Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin instituted the coverage after the Supreme Court docket overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 to make sure that troops who had been assigned to states the place abortions or different forms of well being care akin to IVF therapy had been now not supplied might nonetheless entry these companies.
The coverage sparked outrage in some circles and led Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville to hold up hundreds of military promotions for months in a failed try and get the Pentagon to rescind it. Tuberville in the end withdrew all of his holds in December.
The journey coverage was utilized by service members or their dependents 12 occasions throughout that seven-month interval at a value of roughly $40,000, Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh mentioned Tuesday. The cash lined lodging, meals and transportation for out-of-state journey to obtain care.
The Pentagon mentioned it didn’t have knowledge on the primary 5 months of 2023 as a result of the companies didn’t set up a technique to monitor these makes use of when the coverage was first applied.
The coverage doesn’t cowl the price of abortions, and it’s not clear how most of the 12 journeys had been for abortions or different kind of reproductive well being care, akin to IVF therapy. Singh mentioned the Pentagon wouldn’t have a selected breakdown of what companies had been sought by the service members or their dependents because of medical privateness points.
Below federal legislation, Protection Division medical services can carry out abortions solely when the lifetime of the pregnant particular person is in danger or in instances of rape or incest, and people situations have been extraordinarily uncommon. In accordance with the division, there have been 91 abortions carried out in army medical services between 2016 and 2021.
For months, most of the army officers instantly affected by Tuberville’s holds declined to talk out, for worry any feedback could be seen as political. However because the pressures on their lives and the lives of the officers serving below them elevated, they started to talk about how the uncertainty surrounding their subsequent transfer was hurting not solely them however their youngsters and spouses.
They talked about how a few of their most proficient junior officers had been going to get out of the army due to the instability they noticed round them, and about how having to carry out a number of roles due to so many vacancies was placing huge extra stress on an already overworked army group.
The difficulty got here to a head when U.S. Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith suffered a coronary heart assault in October, simply two days after he’d talked in regards to the stress of the holds at a army convention. Smith absolutely returned to his duties solely in the previous few weeks.
