Military abortion travel NOT to be authorized

The House of Representatives, working on the latest National Defense Authorization Act, voted to disallow military abortion travel funding.

Military abortion travel cut out of NDAA

This vote happened Thursday evening (July 13) on an amendment to the NDAA. Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) proposed the amendment to disallow funding for military abortion travel. It passed, 221-213, with Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), alone among Democrats, voting in favor. (But two Republicans, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and John Duarte of California, voted against it.)

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Speaker of the House, projects that the NDAA will come to a final House vote today.

The Pentagon had in fact allowed reimbursement for military abortion travel last fall, three months after the Dobbs decision. That decision, of course, declared that the federal Constitution does not guarantee a right to abortion. Effectively this allows States to make their own laws on abortion, even to banning it outright. Abortion tourism has begun to flourish as women travel from banning or restrictive States to permissive States. For this reason, abortion overall is down only slightly in the United States. Furthermore, many States – Virginia for one – have become abortion tourist traps, surrounded as they are on all or nearly all sides by restrictive States. (North Carolina became a restrictive state, effective July 1.)

This Assistant Attorney General’s memorandum gave the Pentagon a rationale to circumvent the Hyde Amendment. This amendment, by the late Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), forbade federal taxpayer funding of abortion. The AAG memo held essentially that transportation in aid of abortion is not the same as abortion itself.

And the protests begin

Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), House Minority Whip, decried the vote disallowing military abortion travel reimbursement.

This tweet embeds an impassioned speech Rep. Clark delivered on the House floor, in which she said in part:

The MAGA majority is using our defense bill to get one stop closer to the only thing they really care about: a nationwide abortion ban.

Such a ban would require either a Human Life Amendment, or further changes in the composition of the Supreme Court to seat more Originalists.

National Defense Authorization Acts are required because the Constitution forbids any appropriation for armies lasting more than two years.