CV NEWS FEED // National Security Council spokesman John Kirby called promoting abortion a “sacred obligation” of the government in a recent White House press conference.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, President Joe Biden issued an order to the Pentagon calling on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to incorporate “access to abortion” into service members’ employment benefits. The benefits include paid leave and travel reimbursements for service members in pro-life states who wish to travel to other states to abort their unborn children.
Kirby hailed abortion as “necessary” for the thriving of the U.S. military, “Whether it’s about female service members, one in five, or female family members being able to count on the kinds of health care and reproductive care specifically that they need to serve,” he said.
Kirby claims it is the government’s responsibility to fund abortion and abortion travel if it wishes to encourage enlistment.
“If you don’t think there’s going to be a retention and morale issue,” Kirby said, “think again because it’s already having that effect.”
Kirby said he had met with female military service members and spouses and claimed the majority communicated to him that pro-life laws “are absolutely having an effect on their willingness to continue serving. “That means we lose talent, important talent,” he said.
Ultimately Kirby asserted that the military, “an all-volunteer” task force which dictates the assignments of its members, should be responsible for making abortion available at all times.
However, as Republican Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberbville points out,
The Defense Department’s new abortion policy is patently illegal. Congress has never authorized special travel reimbursement benefits or paid leave for military personnel’s abortions. It flies in the face of the Hyde Amendment, which has prohibited taxpayer funding of most abortions since 1977.
Tuberbville has pledged to block all civilian and general flag officer nominations until the illegal policy is reversed.
