Imagine that you were pregnant, but couldn’t continue the pregnancy. Now imagine that to safely terminate, you had to travel … to another country.
That’s the reality for female members of the U.S. military stationed overseas. Since 1988, United States military clinics and hospitals around the world, even those located in countries where abortion is legal, have been prohibited by the Department of Defense (DOD) from providing abortion care. There are two exceptions to this ban: the facility could perform an abortion if the pregnancy endangered the woman’s life, or if she was pregnant as a result of rape or incest.
Until 2013, DOD funds were prohibited from being used for abortions in cases of rape or incest—so if a servicewoman was raped, became pregnant, and wanted to terminate, she would have to pay out of her own pocket. So it was no small victory when last year’s military budget bill lifted the ban on insurance covering abortion in cases of rape and incest.
Yet significant — some might say undue — barriers still exist to servicewomen who need to terminate their pregnancies, starting with the inability of military hospitals and clinics to provide abortion care even if the woman pays the entire cost on her own. For a servicewoman stationed overseas, this is no small problem. Even in countries where abortion is legal, the servicewoman still must find the time, and obtain permission, to go off base for the procedure. She may have to do that more than once if the clinic she goes to requires a return visit for advance or follow-up care. And if you think getting your boss to approve a random day off is difficult, imagine trying to get a day off in the highly structured and regimented world of a military base — much less being able to get away with giving the bare minimum of personal information necessary to have that request granted.
It’s even worse if servicewomen are stationed in a country like Afghanistan — where the largest number of American deployed forces are stationed — or Honduras or Egypt where abortion is either entirely illegal or allowed only if the woman’s life is in danger. In those cases, having a safe abortion means going to an entirely different country, with all the expense and complications that such a journey entails. Or, if the pregnancy is early enough that medication abortion is an option, it means trying to find reputable online resources for help and hoping that the pills reach you in time.
That enlisted women are protecting the freedom of so many citizens but do not have the freedom of comprehensive health care is shameful. Withholding access to a legal health service simply because they have chosen to enlist in this country’s military makes absolutely no sense, particularly given the epidemic of sexual assault — including rape — that servicewomen must already contend with. We know that servicewomen experience high rates of sexual assault — while roughly one in six civilian women experiences sexual assault, a 2009 study found that number is roughly one in three for women in the military. For both that reason and a host of others, the rate of unplanned pregnancy among servicewomen is higher than the national rate.
Of course, not every unplanned pregnancy ends in termination, and if any woman — soldier or civilian — wants to continue her pregnancy, she should receive as much support and assistance as she needs or wants. But being a pregnant servicewoman brings very unique and specific challenges. Officially, the federal government doesn’t discriminate. But certain military jobs and assignments are difficult, if not impossible, to perform while pregnant or nursing. And while—again, officially—pregnancy should not adversely affect a servicewoman’s opportunities for advancement, in reality many military women, like many civilian women, have seen firsthand how becoming a mother affects their career prospects.
And these are all obstacles that are difficult enough to navigate when they’re the result of a pregnancy that a woman chose to continue. But if the military honestly believes that servicewomen should have all of the opportunities and options for advancement and promotion that are available to servicemen, then they must support those women in all aspects of their lives. Lifting the ban on abortion provision in military hospitals and clinics does not mean that the military is condoning abortion. It simply means that the military recognizes that the right to abortion care is settled law in the United States, and different laws should not apply to this country’s servicewomen.
Sarah Erdreich is the author of Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her family.
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Photo: NEW YORK – MAY 29: U.S. military personnel march in the Little Neck/Douglaston Memorial Day Parade May 29, 2006 in Queens, NY. (Shutterstock/Anthony Correia)
