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n the wake of news that the Pentagon will pay for service members and their dependents to travel to abort their unborn babies, Republicans are reminding the Department of Defense that it may not fund abortions.
“Both the law itself and Congressional intent are clear: the U.S. military may not fund elective abortion,” the bicameral group of lawmakers said in a letter first obtained by The Daily Signal. “This necessarily includes funding for any activity necessitated by the abortion, such as travel and transportation.”
The letter, led by Reps. Chris Smith of New Jersey and Vicky Hartzler of Missouri and Sens. Steve Daines of Montana and James Lankford of Oklahoma, references the Pentagon’s Oct. 20 memorandum announcing that the Defense Department would establish “travel and transportation allowances for Service members and their dependents … to facilitate official travel to access non covered reproductive health care that is unavailable within the local area of a Service member’s permanent duty station.”
The October announcement noted that the move was a direct response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The memorandum claims that funding abortion travel would be done in accordance with federal law, but the Republicans note that funding travel and transportation to get abortions through the DOD would “in and of itself violate federal law” and contradict the Defense Department’s “past recognition, interpretation, and implementation of this law.”
