Power to Decide Urges Congress to Protect Veterans’ Health and Lives

Press release

Power to Decide Urges Congress to Protect Veterans’ Health and Lives

April 19, 2023

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote on SJ 10, a joint resolution to overturn a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) rule allowing abortion care in limited circumstances. Previously, VA regulations banned abortion care and counseling without exception. Last September, a new VA regulation went into effect allowing veterans and their eligible family members and caretakers to access abortion care through the VA in cases of rape, incest and life or health endangerment of the pregnant person. Anti-abortion lawmakers are now forcing a vote to overturn this rule so that abortion care and counseling for veterans will not be allowed under any circumstances. 

Power to Decide CEO, Raegan McDonald-Mosley, MD, MPH, issued the following statement in support of veterans:

“Access to abortion care is essential to a person’s reproductive well-being and autonomy. Since the Dobbs decision, we have seen more and more states ban abortion care. The harms of these bans fall disproportionately on historically disenfranchised communities who face systemic barriers to health care. Now, anti-abortion policymakers want to go further, to take care away from the very people who have put their lives on the line for our country. 

“Our veterans have fought and sacrificed for us. We should be working to protect their freedoms, not trying to take them away. We urge senators to oppose SJ 10. Everyone deserves the power to decide.”

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Power to Decide is a private, non-partisan, nonprofit organization that works to ensure all people — no matter who they are, where they live, or what their economic status might be — have the power to decide if, when and under what circumstances to get pregnant or have a child.