Armed Services Committee Says ‘No’ to Abortions at Military Facilities

The House Armed Services Committee has rejected an amendment, 25-37, that would have permitted members of the service and their dependents to obtain abortions at military facilities.

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) – who has received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Planned Parenthood – proposed the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), arguing that servicewomen should have the right to have an abortion at a military facility if they pay for it themselves, reports CNSNews.com.

“Physicians at that facility know how to do that procedure, because they have done dilations and cerclages and dilations and evacuations for women who are there on base or are the dependents of members who are on base when it’s a miscarriage situation,” Speier said.

However, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) – who introduced the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act – argued strongly against Speier’s amendment to the NDAA:

We want to make bases of our military abortion clinics, and I think it dishonors those who gave everything they had for this country and what it stands for. I think it’s time for all of us to ask the real question as hard as it is and that is, does abortion really take the life of a baby?

Those lying out in Arlington National Cemetery died for a principle suggesting that we hold certain truths to be self-evident–that all of us are created, that the Imago Dei, the image of God, is stamped on every soul, and that every little child has that image stamped on their souls.

Planned Parenthood and abortion lobby group NARAL both tweeted out support for Speier’s amendment:

Women play a vital role in the military. They should be able to access #reprohealth care. #StandWithServiceWomen pic.twitter.com/NR5DADYSRN

— Planned Parenthood Action (@PPact) April 28, 2016

The ban on military women using their OWN funds to access abortion in military hospitals is outrageous. We #StandWithServiceWomen. #FY17NDAA

— NARAL (@NARAL) April 27, 2016

Speier herself tweeted out her disdain for her amendment’s rejection:

It's ridiculous servicewomen are less able to exercise their constitutional right to an abortion than civilians they protect #FY17NDAA

— Jackie Speier (@RepSpeier) April 27, 2016

Speier is a minority member of the special House panel that has recently found evidence that Planned Parenthood has likely profited from its sale of the body parts of aborted babies in its clinics. Referring to the panel as the “Republican Select Committee to Attack Women’s Health,” Speier said the panel represents “the new McCarthyism.”

Since 1996, federal law has banned abortions by Department of Defense medical personnel or at DOD medical facilities. Use of DOD funds for abortion is also prohibited except to save the life of the mother – an extremely rare situation.

“It’s always difficult for me to understand the fact that we take the lives of over a million children a year in America that that is somehow not enough for my friends on the left,” Franks said.

“That they not only want abortion on demand for any reason, at any stage of development, or for no reason, up until the moment of birth and they want the government to pay for it,” he continued. “Now I would challenge them to suggest what part of that statement isn’t true.”

“Our job here is to make sure that our men and women that defend this country are capable of doing so and giving them every opportunity they have,” Franks added, “not to politicize military bases and to overlook the notion that what we’re doing here is something that hurts little babies and hurts their mothers.”