Trump Administration Moves to Ban Abortions in VA Healthcare System | The American Spectator

The Trump administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs moved to prohibit abortions at VA medical facilities and to stop funding abortions for beneficiaries of its health program. Reversing a Biden-era policy that allows abortions in certain cases, the department proposed a rule change in the Federal Register on Monday that would “reinstate the full exclusion on abortions and abortion counseling” from the VA medical benefits package.

If the proposed rule is eventually passed, the VA would repeal Biden’s 2022 policy that “removed long-standing restrictions against abortions,” which was established in the wake of the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade earlier that year. The policy not only provided federally funded abortions, but it also allowed for abortions even in states that had banned abortion.

The VA’s new proposal argues that Biden’s rule was “not only inappropriate as a matter of fact but also was legally questionable.” By reversing the rule, the Trump administration is aiming to restore the principle that federal taxpayer dollars are not used for abortions.

A group of House Republicans on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, led by the committee’s chairman Mike Bost (R-Ill.), issued a statement praising the move to reverse the Biden administration’s “disastrous policy.”

“Taxpayers do not want their hard-earned money spent on paying for abortions and VA’s sole focus should always be providing service-connected health care and benefits to the veterans they serve,” the Republicans said in the statement. “House Republicans, alongside President Trump, will always stand up for the sanctity of life,” they added.

The new rule would reinstate the previous rules adopted in 1999 that only allowed procedures that would cause abortions when a mother’s life is directly threatened, such as ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages.

According to the VA, the Biden administration’s overthrow of decades of precedent “served only to unnecessarily redefine VA’s medical benefits package based on politics instead of science. This proposed rule restores VA to its proper role as the United States’ provider of needed medical services to those who served, delivered on behalf of a grateful nation.”

Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers have decried the move as a great evil. Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee ranking member Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) slammed the proposed rule, saying that he “will be fighting as hard and long as possible to reverse this cruel, dangerous new policy.”

Abortion activists concur. Nancy Northup, the President and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, characterized the VA’s move not to pay for abortions as an “unconscionable” step that would “devalue veterans.”

Although the rule change may seem minor, clearly the Left doesn’t see it that way, and neither should conservatives.

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