Memorial Day Round-Up: Service Women and Abortion Access
30 May
“My patient Carol was excited to give birth to her first child. Her husband was a Marine serving in Afghanistan. Sadly, in her second trimester, Carol learned that her baby had a lethal anomaly. She and her husband made the difficult decision to have an abortion.
That’s when they learned that the military health insurance they relied on wouldn’t cover the abortion unless Carol’s life was in danger.
Her husband was outraged. He had just flown back from Afghanistan to be with her, and he angrily asked me, ‘I’m over there defending my country, and they won’t even take care of my family?’”—Nancy Stanwood, MD, MPH, Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health
More information:
- Lift the Bans: U.S. Servicewomen Denied Essential Abortion Care from the ACLU
- Off Base: The U.S. Military’s Ban on Privately Funded Abortions from the Guttmacher Institute
- Military Abortion Ban: Female Soldiers Not Protected by Constitution They Defend from Religion Dispatches
- In Reproductive Rights Debate, Service Women Cannot Be Ignored from the Service Women’s Action Network
- Service Women Overseas Deserve Better Access to Safe and Legal Health Care from the National Abortion Federation
- Military Women Deserve First-Class Treatment, Not Second-Class Status from RH Reality Check
- Military Service Women Remain Unprotected from the Republican Majority for Choice
So much for “supporting our troops,” eh? Seems this country only supports veterans when it’s convenient. The rest of the time we just pay lip service to our servicepeople and then go back to the barbecues and beaches.
Our military men and women deserve far better than this.