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The V.A. is one of the largest health care providers in America, and women are the fastest-growing population of veterans. Still, abortion was excluded from the V.A.’s health services until just three years ago. Now the Trump administration is attempting to reverse course on that long-overdue expansion of women’s care — at a time when abortion is less available than it had been in decades nationally because of the fall of Roe v. Wade. If the administration is successful, many more women who have served our country will suffer as my client suffered. Some may die.
Before 2022, any discussion of abortion at a V.A. facility was a nonstarter; veterans could not receive information from their trusted doctors on where to receive a safe and legal abortion. Still, many female veterans could make do without V.A. abortion funding because, at the time, there were far more clinics around the country where they could get the procedure. That said, they had to be able to afford the hundreds of dollars an abortion can cost, plus any travel-related expenses, if needed.
In 2022, after the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the V.A. began to provide abortions for women who had experienced rape or incest or who had a life-threatening condition. The rule change was a respite for female veterans in states that had outlawed abortion and shuttered clinics.
Then, of course, Donald Trump was elected again. On Aug. 4 the Trump administration proposed to rescind the 2022 expansion of services. The proposed regulation, which is currently in a public comment period, includes reassurances that the V.A. would never deny health care to women in “life-threatening circumstances.” Such reassurances are little comfort for women in states that have banned abortion. Doctors can struggle to determine when a medical situation becomes life-threatening, sometimes delaying care and putting women’s lives at risk. Pregnant women in states with abortion bans are almost twice as likely as pregnant women in other states to die during pregnancy, childbirth or soon after.
In the proposed regulation, there is no mention of what happens if a woman is raped or what to do for a victim of incest who becomes pregnant. It is not unreasonable to assume that the V.A. will deny those women care. If this rule goes into effect, it is only a matter of time before V.A. physicians have to weigh their patients’ lives against their own livelihoods: In some states, doctors determined to have violated anti-abortion laws run the risk of losing their licenses or serving jail or prison time.