How Abortion Access Could Change for Veterans

Abortion rights advocates are concerned that the Trump Administration will reinstate an abortion ban at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical facilities, rolling back the Biden Administration’s efforts to expand access for veterans and their beneficiaries.

Before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the VA had banned abortion under any circumstances and prohibited its medical providers from counseling patients about abortion. But after the court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Biden Administration enacted a rule allowing VA medical facilities to offer abortion counseling and abortion care to veterans and their beneficiaries in certain situations, including if the health or life of the pregnant person is at risk or if the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest. Even if the VA facility is based in a state that has banned or restricted abortion, medical providers there can still provide abortion care in these limited instances.

Last month, the Trump Administration’s VA submitted for review an interim final rule regarding reproductive health services, according to the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. There’s no further information or details on what the rule says. The VA did not respond to a request for comment, and the White House did not respond to a request for comment by press time. But abortion rights advocates fear that the rule will repeal the Biden-era policy, preventing veterans and their beneficiaries from obtaining abortion care at VA facilities across the country—both in states where abortion is legal and in those that have restricted it.

“If they fully rescind the rule, we would be going back to a complete ban on abortion for veterans through the [VA] health care system,” says Freya Riedlin, senior federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “That was already bad before the Biden Administration, which added in these exceptions, but now we’re living in a completely different landscape.”