At a press conference this Tuesday, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh insisted the Defense Department would not be relenting in its support for servicemembers potentially seeking an abortion. The policy from the department to provide travel support for such personnel who may need to journey to access the care has led to a months-long series of objections from Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) to the advancement of hundreds of nominees for top posts in the military.
These nominees include the replacements for some of the highest-ranking officers across the military’s various branches, and now, three branches — the Marines, Army, and Navy — are operating without Senate-confirmed leadership, a situation that has never before emerged in American history. Responsibilities associated with affected roles can sometimes be fulfilled on what is known as an acting basis by someone else, but the transference of capabilities to such a temporary replacement is not necessarily universal. In addition, Tuberville’s actions have created significant logistical hurdles for the military at its highest levels, though he’s not relented in his demands for a rollback.
Singh actually drew laughter with the curtness of her initial response. “On Senator Tommy Tuberville’s holds, will the Pentagon — is there any possibility the Pentagon could change its policy in any way to compromise with Tuberville?” she was asked, and her answer was simply: “No.” She subsequently provided a more extensive explanation, discussing some of the context for the Defense Department’s perspective on this issue.
“If you are a service member stationed in a state that has rolled back or restricted healthcare access, you are often stationed there because you were assigned there,” Singh said to reporters, per transcripts. “It is not that you chose to go there. And so a service member in Alabama deserves to have the same access to healthcare as a service member in California, as a service member stationed in Korea. And so that’s what that policy does. It’s not a abortion policy. The department does not have an abortion policy. We have a healthcare policy and we have a travel policy that allows for our service members to take advantage of healthcare that should be accessible to them.”
