Trump Prepares to Revoke Lifesaving Abortion Care for Veterans
The Office of Management and Budget concluded its review last week of a Veterans Affairs rule titled Reproductive Health Services, clearing the way to implement it at the VA.
Experts believe the rule is a reversal of a Biden-era policy of the same name which ended the agency's ban on abortion counseling for veterans and allowed for VA providers to offer abortion services in limited circumstances, such as rape, incest, or endangerment of a pregnant person's life or health. If the policy is overturned, hundreds of thousands of veterans in states with abortion bans could lose access to abortion care and counseling.
Sarah Baker, the digital director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the change appears to be 'the first nationwide abortion ban that Trump is supporting and putting in place.'
The new rule has not yet been published, and until it is, experts can't be certain what exactly is in it. The VA did not respond to The Intercept's request for comment. But Rachel Fey, vice president of policy and strategic partnerships at the reproductive and sexual health advocacy organization Power to Decide, said that based on the Trump administration's posture and explicit calls in Project 2025 to reverse the Biden policy, she expects one of two outcomes.
'We think either they would roll back the exceptions to an extremely narrow set that mimics the Hyde Amendment,' Fey said, referring to a law that bars federal funds from being used for abortion care except in cases of rape, incest, or to save a person's life. (The Hyde Amendment does not allow exceptions to preserve a person's health in non-fatal circumstances, as the Biden rule does.)
Or, Fey said, another possibility is 'just striking [the Biden rule] entirely and saying abortion is not allowed in any circumstances at the VA.'
The Biden administration implemented the Reproductive Health Services rule for the VA in 2024, two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Though the rule only allows VA hospitals to provide abortions in extreme circumstances, it was designed to provide basic protections in states that moved quickly to institute abortion bans.
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Over half of all women veterans of reproductive age in the U.S. live in states where abortion is banned or likely to be banned, according to analysis from the National Partnership for Women & Families.
'So that's 345,000 women veterans that live in states that have banned or are likely to ban abortion,' said Jaclyn Dean, director of congressional relations, reproductive health, at the National Partnership for Women & Families. 'For many of the women veterans living in any of those 12 states with total abortion bans, the VA is the only place that they can get abortion care. So you can expect those people to lose abortion care in cases of rape, incest, in the life and health of the pregnant person.'
In that climate, Fey stressed, even narrowing the exceptions could be devastating.
'What we've seen in states like Texas and Idaho is women coming close to death, suffering the loss of future fertility sometimes, suffering long-term disability because they were not given the standard clinical care they needed when they needed it,' Fey said. 'That's what we're talking about when we get to a life exception versus a health exception.'
Rep. Maxine Dexter, D-Ore., who co-authored a letter in April opposing the rule change along with 130 House Democrats, said reversing the Biden rule was a 'betrayal.'
'As a physician, I trained at the VA, where a sign at the entrance read: 'The price of freedom is visible here.' Our veterans sacrificed everything for this country, and in return, we promised them the best care possible,' Dexter wrote in a statement to The Intercept. 'For Trump to reinstate a complete ban on abortion care and counseling at the VA – even in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life or health of the mother — is an utter betrayal of that promise.'
Veterans also face unique health risks related to pregnancy, said Baker with the Center for Reproductive Rights.
'Pregnancy is just riskier for veterans,' said Baker, 'because of the different health risks that they face, higher rates of sexual assault, higher rates of PTSD … and the higher [rates of] other chronic conditions.'
And restricting or cutting off access to abortion would only compound the additional barriers to accessing quality health care that veterans already face, Fey noted.
'Serving in the U.S. military is often a way out of poverty for a lot of people in this country, and because of systemic racism, a disproportionate number of the people looking for that way out are Black and brown women when they serve in the military,' said Fey. 'When we talk about reproductive health care in this country, the harms don't fall equally.'
The Trump administration has been steadily chipping away at policies put in place by President Joe Biden to protect access to reproductive health care. In June, Trump rescinded guidance from the Biden administration that directed hospitals under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act to provide stabilizing treatment to patients in medical emergencies — including abortion care.
'It's all part of this larger plan of extremists to ban abortion wherever they can and to interfere with people's personal medical decisions,' said Dean. 'They're weaponizing control over veterans' health care, instead of doing what's actually best for our country's veterans, which is giving them the health care that they need.'
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