Republican Anti-Abortion Push Treats Women Soldiers Like Second Class Citizens (video)
With 24 states banning abortions or severely limiting them, lack of nationwide access to care puts millions of women at risk, including those who serve.
Weak-kneed Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy caved to the radical right wing of the Republican Party and turned his back on tens of thousands of women (1) serving in the US military last week.
McCarthy allowed the Republican [Take Away Your] Freedom Caucus to insert several culture war issues — including restricting abortion access for US soldiers — into the military budget. A few days later, that budget passed out of the US House of Representatives, primarily on a party line vote (221-213), and was sent to the Senate.
At issue is a Biden Administration executive order that allows travel and time off for abortion care if a pregnant soldier needs an abortion, and she's stationed in a state that bans or severely limits abortion care, like Arizona.
Since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v Wade and sent regulation of abortion back to the states in June 2022, red state legislatures have had a field day passing ever-more restrictive anti-abortion bills. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, 13 states have banned abortion entirely since the SCOTUS decision one year ago. You can see the shocking patchwork of services left in the wake of the SCOTUS decision.
Post-Roe, reproductive healthcare in the US is not just a patchwork, it’s a crazy quilt. A woman’s right to body autonomy and abortion care shouldn’t change at every state line.
Even the Biden Administration accommodation, although very helpful to pregnant people who are serving our country, is still a sexist workaround.
A woman, who has vowed to lay down her life for her country, can't get all necessary reproductive healthcare services on the base where she is stationed? Why? Politics.
“Abortion is essential healthcare for women across sectors, including in the military,” said Arizona Rep. Athena Salman, a long-time advocate for reproductive choice and women’s rights. “Any efforts to restrict or ban it are purely about exerting power and control over people who become pregnant.”
Currently, under the Biden executive order, if she is stationed in one of the 14 states where abortion is illegal or one of the 10 hostile states, like Arizona, where is it severely restricted, the military will allow her paid time off (sick time) to travel to another state to get a self-funded abortion. If the Republicans’ anti-abortion proposal gets past the Senate and the President, pregnant military personnel would not be automatically granted time off to get abortions in other states and would not be able to get them at the base clinic where they are stationed.
Then what? Are the pregnant military forced to choose between unpaid leave and, if not granted, going AWOL, resigning from the military, attempting a do-it-yourself abortion and risking jail time or continuing a pregnancy dictated by government policy?
How are any of these post-Roe work-around policies safe, cost-effective, efficient, equitable or even sane — particularly in light of the continued problems with sexual assault (2) in the US military? According to the New York Times, “nearly one in four servicewomen reports experiencing sexual assault in the military.” If someone is raped and impregnated on a US military base, why can’t they get an abortion on base? Why does anyone have to take unpaid leave and travel hours or days to to get abortion care — especially a victim?
Are there any legal medical procedures that male soldiers can’t get on base — other than transgender healthcare, which applies to everyone and was banned in the same budget? Of course not.
Are there any laws limiting a man’s body autonomy, as long as he is acting with the law? Nope, but perhaps there should be.
Women don’t just get up one day and decide to have an abortion. There are extenuating circumstances and at least one preceding event — fertilization of the egg, through sexual intercourse. Depending on how that transpires, the woman may be a victim and not a willing participant or someone who is able to consent.
Except for the men making laws to repress women’s rights, the role of men in creating the need for an abortion, a man’s personal power to stop abortion by wearing a condom, the entire concept of an unwanted pregnancy and the lifelong physical, emotional and financial consequences for the mother and child are pretty much never mentioned in political speeches or media stories about denying access to abortion.
If every pregnancy is a ‘Gift from God’ that shouldn’t be interfered with by man, Viagra should be banned because impotence is also a ‘Gift from God.’
Why aren’t we talking about men and their direct role in abortion? We’re talking about people who became impregnated by someone with sperm. We’re not talking about the Virgen Mary and the Holy Spirit or Leda and the Swan. Men create the need for abortion by having unprotected sex with women and sometimes having unprotected sex indiscriminately with multiple women they don’t really know or who “aren’t the marryin’ kind”. Hunter Biden is currently the poster boy, in more ways than one, for this lifestyle. Baby Daddy Elon Musk, who has fathered 10 children multiple women (including at least two employees), isn’t far behind. And let’s not forget Jeffry Epstein and his former clientele of rich and powerful men.
Men are too often not held accountable for their sperm and all of the children they father. Also, what happened to male birth control? After The Pill was made available in the early 1960s, there was talk of a male version, since men avoid condoms whenever possible. Male contraception is another topic that you just don’t hear about at all anymore. It seems to me that male contraception options (note the plural) between the condom and vasectomy would be handy for all of the fervently anti-abortion men yammering on social media. Dudes, YOU can take a personal step to stop abortions by never having unprotected sex.
Map Shows Widespread Medical Discrimination
The July 21, 2023 map of abortion laws (above) shows that a woman’s right to body autonomy and reproductive healthcare are severely limited in a massive contiguous swath of states from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes.
Restricting or outright banning abortion in 24 states is evidence of widespread medical discrimination. An interesting side note is that many of those red states also probably don’t have medically accurate sex education as an “opt-out” or at all in school — like Arizona.
With nearly half of US states severely limiting or denying body autonomy and abortion care to women in the US, the risks of forced pregnancy, jail time for an illegal abortion, traveling great distances to get an abortion or death from a botched do-it-yourself abortion are real. Some columnists are predicting that the type of policy the Republicans are pushing will result in fewer women entering the military. I agree. Women already aren’t being treated fairly in the military. It will only get worse if the [Take Away Your] Freedom Caucus has its way, hence the Handmaids meme image above.
Women Are at Risk in Repressive States like Arizona
The random patchwork of abortion care services potentially affects all women living, studying, working, visiting, serving in the military or serving in another way (for example, as a volunteer or missionary) in repressive states like Arizona. Anyone in one of those states who has an unwanted pregnancy they want to terminate, is at risk for multiple undesirable outcomes, including jail time and death, as noted above. The United States, Texas and Arizona already have abysmal maternal death rates. Forcing pregnancy and childbirth on women, who can’t or don’t want to have a child, will just make it all worse.
Arizona, of course, has been at the forefront of the “pro-life” movement with former Arizona Senator Nancy Barto and Center for Arizona Policy Executive Director Cathi Herrod passing dozens of bills restricting a woman’s right to choose safe, legal abortion. During my time in the Arizona House, Republicans passed the 15-week abortion ban (2022); pushed a fetal personhood bill, which would criminalize doctors and patients, and passed it (2021); and promoted fake pregnancy clinics, among other things.
This is just a small sampling of anti-abortion bills passed on a party-line vote by Arizona Republicans, and they’re not done, trust me. To them, “parental choice” is all about choosing private school education over public education. It’s definitely not about a woman’s right to choose if or when she wants to become a Mom.
What about ‘parental choice’? The ultimate parental choice is choosing IF you want to have a child, WHEN to have a child and WITH whom. Government should not dictate who has children when.
Related Links:
Abortion Access and Women’s Health in the Military, Elsewhere
House GOP Approves Record Military Budget with Anti-Abortion and Anti-LGBTQIA Provisions, Democracy Now, July 17, 2023
Nebraska Teen Who Used Pills to End Pregnancy Gets 90 Days in Jail, New York Times, July 20, 2023
House Votes to Limit Abortion Access in the Military Budget, Bowing to the Right, New York Times, July 13, 2023
UK Woman Sentenced to Prison for Abortion in Eighth Month of Pregnancy, New York Times, June 13, 2023
A Poison in the System’: The Epidemic of Military Sexual Assault, New York Times, August 3, 2021
Center for Reproductive Rights Abortion by State Map
Arizona Anti-Abortion Bills and Legislative Battles
Unintended Consequences Will Follow Loss of Abortion Care in Arizona (video), July 25, 2022
SCOTUS Desicion on Roe v Wade Ends Abortion Care in Arizona (video), June 24, 2022
Arizona Reacts to End of Abortion Rights (video), June 24, 2022
Abortion Care Severely Limited in Arizona if SCOTUS Strikes Down Roe v Wade (video), June 14, 2022
Stop Abortion Bans Rally in Tucson (video), May 14, 2022
‘Social Engineering Day’: Featuring Republican Overreach into Personal Decisions (video), March 24, 2022 [15-week abortion ban and anti-trans bills]
#AZLeg Vote Protects Fetuses, Criminalizes Doctors and Patients (floor speech video), April 23, 2021 [Fetal Personhood]
Barto’s Anti-Abortion Bill Criminalizes Doctors & Victimizes Women (video), April 20, 2021 [Fetal Personhood]
SB1457 Is Government Overreach into Women’s Lives (floor speech video), April 1, 2021 [Fetal Personhood]
How Can the #1 ‘Pro-Life’ State Be #50 in Child Wellbeing? (video)
If Arizona Is ‘Pro-Life’, Let’s Look Beyond the Womb (video), February 5, 2020
Is Pornography a Public Health Crisis (video), February 7, 2019. [Medically accurate sex ed]
Footnotes:
1 - Since this article focuses on pregnancy and abortion care, I used “women” in this article because I am writing primarily about people born with a female anatomy, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
2 - On the issue of nonconsensual sexual contact, anyone can be the victim of rape or assault — regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or how they present themselves to the world. Only some people have the added risk of becoming pregnant from it.