The New Dept. of Defense Abortion Policy and the Anti-Abortion Backlash

There have been and continue to be significant bans on abortion in the military (with limited exceptions), through TRICARE and at military treatment facilities. This means most military service members and dependents who need abortion care cannot access it through the military. Jackii Wang, Senior Legislative Analyst with the National Women’s Law Center, sits down to talk with us about a new policy memorandum that expands abortion access for military service members and their dependents.

Post Dobbs, the Department of Defense and the Biden administration have announced a number of changes, some of which have gone into effect. These include providing travel and transportation allowances for traveling off base for an abortion, standardizing “administrative absence,” and extending the deadline to disclose a pregnancy to a commander. These policies have been met with fierce backlash from anti-abortion actors, including those in the Senate who are upholding nominations for military posts.

Links from this episode

National Women’s Law Center on Facebook
National Women’s Law Center on Twitter
Plan C
Abortionfinder.org
Ineedana.com
Repro Legal Helpline
Repro Legal Defense Fund
Digital Defense Fund

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Transcript

Jennie: Welcome to RePROs Fight Back, a podcast on all things related to sexual and reproductive health rights and justice. [music intro]

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Hi RePROs! How's everybody doing? I'm your host Jennie Wetter, and my pronouns are she/her. So y'all, it is August, and for me that means things are a little quiet, which is so delightful. It has given me a chance to get through, like, the ton of reading that has been sitting in my inbox of things that I've only been able to skim before, and now I'm able to, like, go back and more firmly read these papers. Or I try and as soon as I get busy, it falls off of my list of things I can actually accomplish. But I tried to set aside the last hour of my day at work to do reading, whether it's papers or in particular, I try to read repro books that I might be interested in having the authors on the podcast for. And so, my August has actually been quiet and I've been able to do that and do reading at the end of the day. And I've been reading some books for people. I am really excited to hopefully have come on the podcast. One for sure. Another one, I hope she'll say yes. And so, it's just been really nice, and I have been enjoying the, like, quiet and the chance to get caught up on things and get my inbox under control. It looks so nice. It's, like, so not jam-packed full of so much stuff. I wish it could stay like that at all times. Let's see...what else...I know that it's August and, like, seeing the Halloween things out is like way too soon. I am not here for it, but also, I'm, like, ready for spooky season and I know those are two completely contradictory thoughts and I yet hold them both. I was looking through what I wanted to bake last weekend, and, like, what was speaking to me was like a pumpkin recipe. I know y'all, I was like, it's 90 [laughs]. You cannot make this pumpkin recipe. So, I held myself back. I don't know why I am so ready for the fall and spooky season stuff but I am, I'm ready. But that also means I'm starting to think about: what are my spooky season reads gonna be this year? I have been trying to be really good. My to-be-read pile has been, it would be out of control if it was a physical pile, but I read on an e-Reader. So, like my books can pile, pile, pile, pile up, and it's all in one tiny e-reader. And you won't know that I am living in a house of books, but I am trying my best to read down that list. It is so out of control. But that said, I'm ready to start thinking about spooky season books. So, if anybody has any good recommendations for either fun, witchy vibe books or, like, scary books or whatever, feel free to reach out to me. You know, as always, you can email me at jennie@reprofightback.com or you can reach out to me on social media. I'm at @JennieinDC on Twitter, or you can find my Instagram @allbooksandbread—that's my bookstagram account. So yeah, any and all recommendations are welcome. I think those are like the big things. I just, I'm ready, I am ready for the fall vibes reading. I don't know why I'm just, all of a sudden the switch got flipped in my head and I am here for it! I think with that we'll turn to this week's interview. I am really, really excited to have Jackii Wang with the National Women's Law Center on to talk about the Department of Defense and their new abortion policy. I am so excited to dig deep into it and talk about what it means, some of the backlash we've seen, and what you can do to fight back. And with that, let's go to my interview with Jackii.

Hi Jackii, thank you so much for being here!

Jackii: Hi, Jennie. Thanks so much for having me.

Jennie: Okay. Before we get started, do you want to do a quick round of introductions and include your pronouns?

Jackii: Yes, I’m happy to. So, my name is Jackii Wang. I use she/her pronouns. I am a senior legislative analyst with the National Women's Law Center. And for folks who don't know, the National Women's Law Center is a gender justice organization. We work on advocacy through the courts, with Congress, with the administration and other legislators to advance issues central to the lives of women and girls. I work specifically on reproductive rights and health, but we also have teams that work on issues like income security, childcare, education and workplace justice, and judges and issues like that.

Jennie: Y'all are so awesome. We work with y'all on a number of issues or have had you on for a number of different topics or people at National Women's Law Center. So, always grateful to have you all on. I'm really excited for today's topic. It's been in the news and it's such an important issue. But I think before we get to like where we are at now, we should probably, like, roll back and talk about abortion access in the military before this new rule went into place so people get a better idea of, like, where it was and then what changed.

Jackii: Yeah, absolutely. I'm a little sad to say that the status quo in terms of abortion access in the military is sort of the same when it comes to federal law. So, there are and have been bans on abortion in the military, both in TRICARE coverage—that's the military health program—and a ban on abortion care at military treatment facilities, both with very limited exceptions, and those exceptions are cases of rape, incest, and life endangerment. So, what that means is that most military service members dependents who need abortion care can't access it through the military.

Jennie: And I would assume, like, with most exceptions, like, they're just hard to implement. So, it's kind of hard to get an abortion even in those cases, I would assume, but maybe that's not true.

Jackii: Yeah, that's right. I don't think we have too many numbers available in terms of, like, how many abortions have been performed in the military, but I think what I have seen is very few of them. And of course, I'm sure that military healthcare providers face similar sorts of complicated questions and challenges they have to figure out when seeing if they're legally allowed to provide care.

Jennie: Okay. So that's where it has been. So, there's this new policy that has started to be implemented. Can we talk about what this new policy is?

Jackii: So, there have been some exciting actions taken by the Department of Defense and the Biden administration. Following Dobbs, the Department of Defense issued a policy memorandum basically announcing a number of changes, and a few of them have gone into effect. Some of these include providing travel and transportation allowances for service members and dependents who need to travel off base for abortion care. It also includes standardizing what's called administrative absence for military service members who do need to take time off to get care. That's non-chargeable which is great because I think before this, there were challenges in certain branches with service members having to take time off or being fearful of requesting time off or even being denied that time because they need to go off base for care. So, these are some really, really important changes. I think another one that's really critical and often doesn't get talked about is a delay in the required timeline to tell your commander of when you're pregnant. So, typically it was you had to tell your commander within two weeks of gestation or sometimes you would go in to see your military health care provider and you would get a pregnancy test, you'd test positive, and they would automatically tell your commander that you were pregnant. And obviously that had a lot of unintended consequences. Now, the Department of Defense is saying you can wait up until 20 weeks. And that's great because that, you know, allows some buffer time for a service member to figure out what they wanna do. And that might be to obtain an abortion. This has really been super, super helpful and it's such a great policy. We have heard from some veterans that we work with that this would've been really fantastic for them during their time of service. So, for example, one of the veterans we work with, her name is Mia Leigh Renna. She is a veteran. She was in the military and found out that she was pregnant and didn't want to be, and she had to take time off, but didn't want to tell her commander about it, was really scared of any retaliation. So, she crossed her fingers, asked for time off, and luckily her commander didn't ask her why. And she drove herself to a clinic, refused pain medication under the procedure, and then drove herself home. And, you know, throughout it all, you know, she was really scared. She was scared because she had to go alone, she had to navigate all this, that she had to go without pain meds. And then she went straight back to work and work [inaudible] day, and it was really, really difficult for her. And unfortunately, later she was asked to take a pregnancy test, sort of, like, a routine pregnancy test and had still tested positive. She ended up being reassigned and essentially retaliated against for that. So, you know, sort of her worst nightmares were coming true anyways. But it's just a great example of how a policy like the one that the Department of Defense just released is so important. It really does provide a lot more flexibility for military service members. And if you think about the fact that a lot of folks are stationed in states where abortion is now illegal or inaccessible, you know, they can't get the care on base, they can't get the care in their state that they're in, they have to travel further and further to get an abortion. So, that's why policies like these are just so critical.

Jennie: I was much more familiar, like you said, with the one about the travel and such. And I wasn't familiar until I was researching for this episode about the extension to, like, not needing to notify until 20 weeks and was shocked at how short the window was before. And now I am shocked all over again that there was, like- some had automatic reporting, which- that just seems wild to me.

Jackii: Yeah, yeah. And there's such a culture in the military of, like, your commander dictating every part of your, not just, like, your work, but also, like, the time you could take off and vacation and time you can go off base. It really cultivated a huge culture of fear and still to this day, you know, even with these great policies in place, like, I think a lot of service members are still fearful of, you know, being discovered or telling their commanders personal details and things like that. It's still a huge problem.

Jennie: Yeah, I can totally see that 'cause, like, while you have these great policies now, or much better policies now, like having to tell your- ask for the time off for like the specific reason, like still could be very complicated.

Jackii: Yeah, absolutely.

Jennie: Okay, so yay! New policy in place, people are able to take advantage of it. Done right? Like everything's good, sunshine and rainbows, no backlash. Perfect.

Jackii: Well, it wouldn't surprise you to know, Jennie, that there have been a lot of claims from anti-abortion lawmakers especially in Congress, that this rule or these policies I should say are illegal or just generally pushing back on these protections. And there has been a lot of creativity around the ways that they have tried to push back. So, for example, one that you may have heard of is that Senator Tommy Tuberville from Alabama has been essentially holding hostage Pentagon nominations over these policies. So, he objects to these policies and, you know, says that they're quote-unquote illegal. But the way that he's doing it is through sort of an unprecedented move. He's holding up nominations to certain military posts and essentially using a parliamentary procedure called unanimous consent that the Senate uses to do sort of perfunctory things. For example, confirming Pentagon nominations. So, this is usually like a very like, you know, normal thing that happens. They have to get through it all. But Senator Tuberville has said, I object. And now over 300 posts in the military remain unconfirmed, which has a ton of really harmful consequences. I mean, I think most obviously for folks, it's to the fact that, you know, there are so many leadership positions that are now virtually empty. So, it impacts, of course, military readiness. But I think what's important to understand, too, that for military families, it means a hold on their whole lives. So, they can't make a lot of short-term near-future decisions. You know, they know that they'll eventually get posted somewhere else, they have to move to a different state, all that kind of stuff. They have to arrange their lives for that. So, that may mean figuring out where you're gonna be living, figuring out what school district your kid is gonna be going to, and enrolling them in there, enrolling them in extracurriculars and even, you know, your spouse may have to transfer jobs. All of that stuff is on hold and so many families I think are in limbo. So, actually I saw that, I just saw that a group of military families just delivered a petition about this hold this week, just detailing how harmful this hold. So, it's a really I guess, heinous way of opposing this policy. And it's clear that Senator Tuberville is not interested in using any sort of regular procedure. He has claimed that because the policy is "illegal" that the administration first needs to rescind it and then they need to vote on it, but of course, what that is, it's just really an attempt to further restrict abortion care for military service members. So, I don't think anybody's under any illusion of what his ultimate goals are here. Aside from Senator Tuberville's hold, we have also seen a lot of legislators try to attack the Department of Defense's policies through other means. That includes like poison pill riders and big omnibus legislation like appropriations, like the National Defense Authorization Act. And so really the attacks have been coming left and right. I think that one thing that is clear is that it's not popular. And I think a lot of lawmakers have- themselves who are veterans have spoken up and said, this is an absolute affront to our service and our rights.

Jennie: And just to clarify, like the attacks on the new policy are what is...not the policy.

Jackii: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, thanks for that clarification. That's right. You know, a lot of veterans, including folks like Representative Jason Crow, Representative Elissa Slotkin, Mikie Sherrill, and Chrissy Houlahan, they have been really vocal about the fact that, you know, they have served, or, you know, they worked alongside the military and this is a direct attack on them and what was promised to them. So, I think one really great thing is that [inaudible] right? These writers haven't made it into law and we're really, really hoping that they don't stick. And the other part is that the Biden administration has been really great about pushing back, they haven't caved in Senator Tuberville’s demands. There's no indication that they would negotiate on these. And I think, you know, speaking probably for all of us, that that would be a huge deal-breaker for big pieces of legislation. But it's just really, really critical that these remain in place. And I think especially as we're seeing the aftermath of Dobbs continue to unfold we just need to have all of these protections in place so that as the care becomes further and further out of reach, at least military service members have some sort of lifeline to the care that they-

Jennie: I mean, it's so huge, right? Like, you're stationed somewhere that doesn't have access and then you're in a state that doesn't have access and, like, not being able to get time off or have the money you need to travel to get basic healthcare, like, that is huge and is gonna impact people's decision to join the military or many other things. Like, it is really huge to make sure that this policy stays.

Jackii: Yeah, absolutely. And there's so many veterans that I talk to now, including women, including trans and non-binary veterans, who have me- if I get asked by, you know, my niece by a friend or, you know, by another woman, "should I join the military?" Right now, I would say no. And, you know, for all of these reasons. And then on top of, I think, you know, a lot of other ways that the system has failed, including military sexual trauma. But generally speaking, right, they feel that they could be assigned to a station where abortion care is completely out of reach and that's just a no go for them. And something I do wanna point out too that I didn't really realize until I started this work is that, you know, if you're a Junior Enlisted service member, you're really not making that- you can make like 23,000 a year. And if you think about that, you probably will have to pay out of pocket for your abortion. You know, that's just all the more reason why you getting financial support to travel, get on a plane, get in a car, you know, you getting essentially paid leave to go get that care that you need is so important. Like, that is- you know, that all those costs really compound. So, I just couldn't imagine, you know, making that little and then having to find my own way to get an abortion somewhere far away from where I was stationed, you know, especially as a young person.

Jennie: Yeah. And exact same conversations that I've had on the podcast around anybody needing to get an abortion that is in one of these states. You are not talking about driving 50 miles down the road. I mean, people in the South may have to travel as far as Illinois or to New York. I mean, these are big distances that people are having to find the money and the time off work. I mean, this is a huge policy that will enable service members to get the care they need. Yeah, it's huge.

Jackii: Yeah. And on top of that, like military service members, they have such unique scenarios. I mean, I wanna be clear, right? Like, all of us have unique situations.

Jennie: Yeah.

Jackii: And unique barriers and challenges that may prevent us from getting an abortion. But I think for military service members who might be deployed overseas or might be in a special operations mission, there's just so many more complications that they have to consider. And frankly, you know, that may lead to them just being denied care altogether. It's just- we need to be doing everything we can to make sure that everybody, including service members who are in these scenarios, can actually go and get an abortion without all of these challenges.

Jennie: So, we spend a lot of time talking about the abortion policy. Before we talk about what needs to be done, it might be worth taking a minute to talk about fertility because that was something that was also impacted by this policy. It's not just about abortion.

Jackii: That's right. I think something that a lot of folks miss, and in particular the legislators who have been attacking the Department of Defense's policies, is that the leave and travel policy also applies to service members who need to travel to get fertility care. So, they have their travel and transportation allowances covered for that. They get administrative absence to travel for fertility care. And you know, notably TRICARE does not cover certain assisted reproductive services including intrauterine insemination and in vitro fertilization. So, all the more reason why this policy is so important. In some of the, I would say extremely broad attacks from certain legislators, they have swept this into their ban on this policy. They have just sort of tried to attack this broader policy and I think without understanding that nuance, but of course, I guess it's no surprise that really their attacks are on all of our fundamental rights and nothing is safe including fertility care, including abortion care. So, that's a really great clarification.

Jennie: Yeah, I think it is something that I was definitely even like being fairly aware of this policy. Like again, when I was doing my research yesterday, I was like, "oh, I didn't know fertility care was part of this." And that's a real shame, right? Like, that's something I should have been more aware of. And I mean, not to say that this is on anything other than me not reading more on what was going on, but [laughs] you know, reading only the headlines or the top lines, it was easy to miss.

Jackii: Yeah, and I mean also another thing that I think is really important is to read actually the text of what some of these Republican lawmakers have proposed and have actually gotten into packages like the National Defense Authorization Act at least for now, which is not just resinding these policies but a total ban on this and tying the Department of Defense's hands from issuing any relevant policy in the future. So, it really goes beyond agreement with this policy or maybe the way that the agency has gone about it. It's really just outright on abortion and incidentally, fertility care in this way, or I should say in these protections that they have created to help access this care.

Jennie: I think, you know, before we move on to, like, what needs to be done, maybe a good question for people to really get a grasp on what's happening is, like, kind of a scope of who's impacted and, like, how many people are feeling the impacts of these policies.

Jackii: So, the military health system serves approximately 1.62 million women of reproductive age, and there are also an estimated several thousand transgender men who may require abortion care in addition to non-binary members who may need reproductive healthcare. If you consider those numbers and the fact that there are so many military installations that exist in or border states with abortion bans, that is so many folks who are actively being denied care where they live. For example, Texas and Georgia are two of the top five states of the highest population of military personnel. They're also the two states that experience the largest declines in the number of abortions in the six months right after the Dobbs decision. So, if you think about having to be stationed in a state where abortion banned, having to travel outside of that state, maybe traveling many states over, and then thinking about maybe a multitude of other restrictions, it just makes abortion care, you know, untenable for so many people. So again, you know, painting that picture, I think it's really important to think about each individual circumstance. And that's something that certainly these anti-abortion lawmakers are not thinking about or at least are actively trying to undermine.

Jennie: It's so hard for them to access care. Why this policy is such a good policy that, like, now that as an audience member, you are more informed, you're in a great place to talk to people and tell them why it is so important if it comes up or you see a headline, like it is really worth just like expanding the base of people who are familiar with this problem.

Jackii: That's right. And I think emphasizing that a lot of people join the military maybe for academic reasons, maybe for a career, and they were promised a healthcare system that would meet their needs and they're not being met, right, being exacerbated by the Dobbs decision. So, we really owe it to them. And while I, you know, everybody is deserving of abortion care without barriers, I think it is really interesting to consider that you could have better access to abortion care as a civilian than if you were a service member or a military spouse, say. So, you know, really everybody should be able to access care when they need it. But I do think it's particularly awful that you may choose a certain career that limits your access to abortion just because of that.

Jennie: Jackii, thank you so much for being here. It was wonderful to talk to you.

Jackii: Yeah, thanks for having me and I was really glad to be able to talk about the subject.

Jennie: Okay, y'all, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Jackii. I had a wonderful time talking to her and I will see you all in two weeks. [music outro] If you have any questions, comments, or topics you would like us to cover, always feel free to shoot me an email. You can reach me at jennie@reprosfightback.com or you can find us on social media. We're at @RePROsFightBack on Facebook and Twitter or @reprosfb on Instagram. If you love our podcast and wanna make sure more people find it, take the time to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Or if you wanna make sure to support the podcast, you can also donate on our website at reprofightback.com. Thanks all!