The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is proposing to end a Biden administration policy of providing publicly-funded abortion and abortion counseling at the agency’s medical facilities.
The VA’s new proposed rule, filed Monday, brings back a policy implemented in 1999 that excluded abortions and abortion counseling from its taxpayer-funded benefits, with exceptions for when a mother’s life is threatened. Former President Joe Biden’s VA removed the exclusions in September 2022 after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision threw abortion supporters into a frenzy for allowing states to restrict the procedure.
“Prior to the Biden Administration’s politically motivated change in 2022, federal law and longstanding precedent across Democrat and Republican administrations prevented VA from providing abortions and abortion counseling,” a VA spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “VA’s proposed rule will reinstate the pre-Biden bipartisan policy, bringing the department back in line with historical norms.”
VA Secretary Doug Collins told the DCNF in June that the Biden-era policy was under review. “We’re making sure whatever we do works out best for the veteran and also for the care that we provide,” Collins said at the time.
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Biden’s VA rule allowed beneficiaries to seek abortion in cases of rape and incest and counseling about their pregnancy options, even in states that have banned abortions, according to a VA webpage.
“Our decision to restore VA’s medical benefits package to its pre-2022 state is consistent with VA’s decades-long interpretation of the law, the reversal of which served only to unnecessarily redefine VA’s medical benefits package based on politics instead of science,” the VA’s new rule says. “This proposed rule restores VA to its proper role as the United States’ provider of needed medical services to those who served, delivered on behalf of a grateful nation.”
The VA’s new decision reflects the Trump administration’s goal to remove left-wing ideological priorities from ostensibly nonpartisan federal agencies.
The department similarly ended a program providing cross-sex hormones and “gender-affirming” prosthetics to veterans who identify as transgender across multiple presidencies, including the first Trump administration. Collins previously told the DCNF that the move would save “literally millions of dollars.”
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