The United States Department of Justice has instructed the United States Department of Veterans Affairs to stop providing any abortion care or abortion counseling, even in cases of rape or incest. The change in rules results from the Project 2025 manual. (Getty Images)
The United States Department of Justice has instructed the United States Department of Veterans Affairs to stop providing any abortion care or abortion counseling, even in cases of rape or incest, revoking Politics 2022 is intended to maintain access for military members, regardless of where they may be deployed.
On Tuesday, VA press secretary Peter Kasperowicz told States Newsroom in an email that the agency was immediately complying with the legal opinion. The guidelines also apply to beneficiaries of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Civilian Health and Medical Program (CHAMPVA), which provides care to veterans’ families, including children, as well as veterans’ caregivers.
“The opinion of the Department of Justice is consistent with Proposed VA rulewhich is still going through the regulatory process,” Kasperowicz said, referring to the August rule proposal restoring full exclusion regarding abortion care.
Public comments on the draft rule ended on September 3. More than 24,000 comments were submitted, but it is unclear how many were for it and how many were against it. The final regulations have not yet been published.
The nonpartisan nonprofit Minority Veterans of America provided a comment on the proposed rule, asking that it be withdrawn because it puts marginalized communities at further risk.
“Veterans face unique medical risks that make them particularly vulnerable to health complications during pregnancy,” reads the letter sent to the VA. “Limiting access to abortion care for veterans who become pregnant as a result of rape will only re-traumatize victims of sexual assault, while also causing greater harm to veterans. And prohibiting VA entities from offering abortion counseling will make it more difficult to access necessary medical care and undermine veterans’ confidence in VA services.”
According to estimates from non-profit organizations National Partnership for Women and Familymore than 400,000 veterans lived in states that already have abortion bans in place or are likely to do so in 2023. This number represents more than half of all veterans in the country.
Former Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration passed the regulation in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which ended federally protected access to abortion. Veterans Affairs medical centers could perform abortions in cases of rape or incest, or when the life or health of the pregnant person was in danger. Giving advice on abortion was also allowed.
The Justice Department opinion was written by Joshua Craddock, deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of General Counsel. It was issued on December 18 and stated that the federal agency could not provide abortion services under federal law, except for services intended to save the life of a pregnant patient, nor could it provide any abortion counseling.
Craddock joined the Justice Department in July after years of writing about his views that life begins at fertilization and that legal protections should apply from that stage of life. His views include: opposition to customary in vitro fertilization, which he wrote about together with Lila Rose, founder and president of the anti-abortion organization Live Action.
He also advocated the operate of the 1873 anti-obscenity law, known as the Comstock Act, as a means of prohibiting the mailing of abortion drugs. This is the same law cited by several Republican-led states that are suing to restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone.
A repeal of the rule was also a must in Project 2025, a design document published by the conservative Heritage Foundation and co-authored by anti-abortion groups such as Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. The first of what the document calls “needed reforms” is the repeal of all department clinical policy directives that are “contrary to the principles of conservative governance, starting with abortion services and gender reassignment surgery.”
This story was originally produced by News from the USwhich is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network that includes Pennsylvania Capital-Star, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
