More than 200,000 women are serving in the US military—protecting our rights and defending freedom—yet they do not have the freedom to privately pay for an abortion at the military medical facilities where they are required to obtain all their health care. A service woman has to get permission from her commanding officer, wait for an available military transport and head home to the land of the free and home of the brave to have access to a safe and legal abortion.

Last week Congress took what should have been a simple vote to lift the current ban and allow women to have abortions at military facilities. And, because no US funds can be used to provide abortion services, women would have been required under the proposal to reimburse the government for the procedure.

 

Opponents opined that the core purpose of our military hospitals is to care for service men and women, particularly those who are wounded in the line of duty. They neglected to mention that military hospitals also provide the full range of basic health services for military personnel. The rants went a predictable direction—that this legislation would turn military hospitals into abortion clinics.

 

Now, if it is not bad enough that the effort to lift the ban lost by a vote of 191 to 237, the powers-that-be also kept the House from being able to take a vote on whether military women should have access to emergency contraception (EC). My rational mind thinks, hey, if you don’t want abortions performed in military hospitals, one obvious thing to do would be to prevent an unintended pregnancy in the first place. One obvious way to do that—available to any woman on our soil—is for women to have access to EC.

 

But the powerful Rules committee did not even allow the House to have the opportunity to vote on EC, leaving both abortions and the means to prevent them beyond reasonable reach. Ah, democracy.