The White House has declared abortion a “sacred obligation” of the military.
National Security spokesman John Kirby made the comments during a Monday press briefing, where he claimed individuals who serve in the military have a right to federal funding for abortion. The remarks came in response to a question from RealClearPolitics reporter Phil Wegmann, who pressed Kirby on the administration’s criticism of Rep. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., for holding up military promotions over aggressive far-left social policy. In February, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced the Pentagon would cover up to three weeks of paid leave and travel for U.S. military personnel and their families for abortions.
[READ: It’s Joe Biden, Not Tommy Tuberville, Who Brought The ‘Culture War’ To The Military]
Tuberville has followed through on his pledge to place a hold on Department of Defense nominees if the new policy were put in place. President Joe Biden condemned the Alabama lawmaker’s use of checks and balances to preserve prohibitions on federal funding for abortion as “irresponsible.”
“Why is the new DOD policy on abortion critical to military readiness?” Wegmann asked Monday.
Kirby responded by defending the Pentagon’s promotion of abortion as a “sacred obligation” that the federal government has to “female service members” and “transgender individuals who qualify.”
When you sign up and make that contract, you have every right to expect that the organization, in this case, the military, is going to take care of you and your family and make sure you can serve with dignity and respect, no matter who you are or who you love or how you worship or don’t. And our policies, whether they are diversity, inclusion, and equity, whether they’re about transgender individuals who qualify, physically and mentally to serve, to be able to do it with dignity, or whether it is about female service members, 1 in 5, or female family members being able to count on the kinds of health care, reproductive care specifically, that they need to serve, that is a foundational sacred obligation of military leaders across the river.
The military’s embrace of far-left social activism, ranging from benefits for abortion-on-demand to radical accommodation for trans-identified service members, has jeopardized military readiness and driven recruitment levels to dangerous lows. One of President Biden’s first executive orders reversed President Donald Trump’s policy that people “with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria — individuals who the policies state may require substantial medical treatment, including medications and surgery” — were disqualified from the military.
House Republicans broke down for a reporter last week how transgender pandering by the Pentagon interfered with military vigilance. Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, explained how the admission of trans-identified soldiers can require more than a year of medical interventions that slow down deployment.
“If you bring people in and you start this process, it takes months, months, and months, well over a year before you guys do the hormone transition, before you get the gender reassignment surgeries and all the stuff,” Jackson said. “During this entire time, these individuals are not deployable. They’re not deployable, so someone else is going to do a second deployment in their place during this process. That’s not fair to the other members of the military.”
