{"id":3825,"date":"2025-08-14T00:45:42","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T00:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/?p=3825"},"modified":"2025-08-14T00:45:42","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T00:45:42","slug":"veterans-are-guinea-pigs-in-trumps-first-national-abortion-ban-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunowner-news.com\/?p=3825","title":{"rendered":"Veterans Are \u201cGuinea Pigs\u201d in Trump\u2019s First National Abortion Ban Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Ash Wallis knows<\/span> she likely wouldn\u2019t survive another pregnancy. Doctors said as much years earlier after she suffered a pulmonary embolism following a miscarriage, and got a second blood clot. Getting pregnant again isn\u2019t a risk she is willing or able to take.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have two sons,\u201d said Wallis. \u201cI don\u2019t want to leave them motherless.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wallis, 40, begged her health care provider to give her an IUD \u2014 her best chance at preventing another pregnancy and protecting her life. But her provider, the Department of Veterans Affairs, refused to cover the procedure. Despite three years of service in the Army, Wallis was forced to pay out of pocket at a local clinic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe risks of me getting pregnant and there being a significant health issue were too much risk for me to gamble on,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Access to reproductive care and abortion has long been a problem for those who rely on VA care. But a policy change by the Trump administration stands to make reproductive health for service members and veterans even worse. Last week, the administration posted a proposed rule<\/a> for VA facilities that would severely narrow access to abortion \u2014 eliminating exceptions for health, rape, and incest, and only allowing the procedure in situations deemed to threaten the life of the mother. The rule would also ban any counseling for abortion through the VA. The proposed policy now enters a mandatory 30-day comment period, after which it can go into effect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Experts told The Intercept that the rule change will have devastating consequences for the millions of service members and veterans reliant on health care through the VA, as well as their families.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the worst-case scenario,\u201d said Rachel Fey, vice president of policy and strategic partnerships at Power to Decide, a nonprofit focused on reproductive and sexual health.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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The Department of Veterans Affairs has long excluded abortion care and abortion counseling from its medical benefits package, with a narrow exception for the \u201clife of the mother.\u201d That changed in 2022 when the Biden administration, recognizing the danger posed to veterans and service members by the Supreme Court\u2019s Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization<\/a> decision<\/a>, instituted a new rule allowing for abortion counseling and abortion care in an expanded list of circumstances.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s this Biden-era change that is under attack by the Trump administration. The administration describes the proposed policy shift as a return to form.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrior to the Biden Administration\u2019s politically motivated change in 2022, federal law and longstanding precedent across Democrat and Republican administrations prevented VA from providing abortions and abortion counseling,\u201d wrote Gary Kunich, a Veterans Affairs spokesperson, in a statement to the Intercept.<\/p>\n

Fey and other reproductive health experts had anticipated the Trump administration would institute an abortion ban at the VA<\/a>. But they told The Intercept that this version is particularly draconian considering the dramatic fall-off in abortion access following the Dobbs decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis new policy would be one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, and for veterans living in the\u202f12 states\u202fthat ban abortion, it would further close off what may be their only opportunity to access urgently needed abortion care,\u201d said Liz McCaman Taylor, senior federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, in a statement. \u201cFor veterans living in these states, they may now be forced to carry pregnancies to term even if they were raped or the pregnancy puts their health in jeopardy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The proposed rule would \u201creinstate the full exclusion on abortions and abortion counseling.\u201d Unlike under the Biden rule, which allowed for abortion counseling and abortion care to protect the health of the mother or in cases of rape and incest, the new proposed rule only includes a vague, narrow exception for \u201clife of the mother.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the avoidance of doubt, the proposed rule would make clear that the exclusion for abortion does not apply \u2018when a physician certifies that the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term,\u2019\u201d wrote the administration in a summary of the draft proposal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, in a potentially complicating line, the administration wrote: \u201cTaken together, claims in the prior administration\u2019s rule that abortions throughout pregnancy are needed to save the lives of pregnant women are incorrect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jaclyn Dean, director of congressional relations, reproductive health, at the National Partnership for Women & Families, said that the lack of medical clarity around when doctors are allowed to intervene is going to cost lives. \u201cIf I\u2019m a doctor for the VA,\u201d said Dean, \u201cI\u2019m very confused about what I\u2019m legally allowed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fey said her organization, Power to Decide, was \u201cnot aware of any circumstances\u201d where the VA covered abortion care under the life exception in place before the Biden rule. \u201cThere was always sort of supposed to be this very, very narrow life exception, but similar to what\u2019s happening now in the post-Dobbs world, we\u2019re seeing that those life exceptions don\u2019t work in practice,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Lindsay Church, executive director of Minority Veterans of America, said the counseling ban adds another layer of risk because providers are prevented from even discussing the option of abortion until it may be too late.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGood luck if you get to a place where you\u2019re dying,\u201d said Church, \u201cbecause you can\u2019t get abortion counseling before that. And that, to me, is insulting. Not only that, but it could have deadly consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n

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