WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has officially confirmed it will no longer offer elective abortions or abortion counseling to members of the armed forces, following the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) retraction of a Biden-era rule permitting the practice.
As previously covered by LifeSiteNews, a December memo from the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) reversed its 2022 judgment allowing such abortions, which had been issued following the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade, as part of former President Joe Biden’s “whole of government” effort to preserve abortion “access.”
“In 1992, Congress amended title 38 ‘to improve health care services for women veterans’ and for other purposes,” the memo explains. “With respect to VA’s authority to furnish hospital care and medical services, section 106 of the VHCA made clear that VA could provide ‘[g]eneral reproductive health care’ to women. Id. § 106(a)(3), 106 Stat. at 4947. But Congress carved out from that authority ‘infertility services, abortions, or pregnancy care (including prenatal and delivery care), except for such care relating to a pregnancy that is complicated or in which the risks of complication are increased by a service-connected condition.’ Statutory language thus barred VA’s provision of abortions and limited its provision of pregnancy care to situations that were ‘complicated.’”
It was this language under that the VA’s relevant medical regulations were originally made, specifying a so-called life-of-the-mother exception, yet Biden permitted the VA to “remove the exclusion on abortion counseling and expand the exceptions to the exclusion on abortions for beneficiaries.” Abortions were expanded to alleged cases where “the life or the health of the pregnant veteran would be endangered” or if the “pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest.”
On January 28, Military.com reported that the VA has now ended abortion “services” in compliance with the new legal guidance. The VA oversees healthcare to more than nine million service members via medical centers, outpatient clinics, and other affiliated providers.
“The Department of Justice last year issued an opinion that states VA is not legally authorized to provide abortions, and VA complied with that opinion immediately,” VA spokesperson Pete Kasperowicz said. “DOJ’s opinion is consistent with VA’s final rule on this matter.”
“Prior to the Biden administration’s politically motivated change in 2022, federal law and longstanding precedent across Democrat and Republican administrations prevented VA from providing abortions and abortion counseling,” he added.
Democrats led by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) have expressed outrage at the reversal and have introduced a resolution in Congress in hopes of undoing it, although it is not expected to achieve the simple-majority vote necessary in the current Congress. “We won’t stop being loud about this,” Murray declared.
Support of abortion through publicly-funded sources and institutions has been the issue on which President Donald Trump has most strongly continued the pro-life record of his first term. Within weeks of returning to office, he began enforcing the Hyde Amendment, reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which forbids non-governmental organizations from using taxpayer dollars for most abortions abroad, and cut millions in pro-abortion subsidies by freezing U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spending.
Last July, Trump signed into law his controversial “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (BBB), a wide-ranging policy package that includes a one-year ban on federal tax dollars going through Medicaid to entities that commit abortions for reasons other than rape, incest, or supposed threats to the mother’s life.
However, Trump recently revived pro-life worries when he told a gathering of House Republicans “you’ve got to be a little flexible on Hyde” for the sake of reaching a deal in the narrowly-divided Congress on health care reform, an issue which has picked up steam in recent weeks due to the recent expiration of subsidies under the so-called “Affordable Care Act” (Obamacare). The declaration sparked alarm and protest from pro-life leaders and activists, many of whom framed Hyde as one of the federal government’s most basic and non-negotiable pro-life obligations.
When asked about the comment the next day, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denied any change in position and touted the second Trump administration’s record so far of opposing taxpayer funding of abortion, but did not specifically rule out some sort of compromise on Hyde in healthcare negotiations, leaving the controversy unresolved.
Still, the efforts have had a positive impact overall, including in the military. In December, records from the military’s TRICARE health service program indicated that abortions among servicemembers and their families have dropped to a five-year low.
