Testifying before House lawmakers on Thursday, one of the Veterans Affairs’ top health officials defended the department’s effort to offer limited abortions for women veterans in states where the procedure is banned.
The VA earlier this month proposed a rule that would allow its providers to perform abortions in cases where the woman’s life is at risk or the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest. Unlike in most of the twelve states that ban abortion in all cases, women do not have to prove to VA doctors with a police report that they were assaulted.
Dr. Shereef Elnahal, the VA’s undersecretary for health, said the expansion of benefits “is a patient safety decision first and foremost.”
“We are committed to providing veterans with access to world class health care and services including reproductive health care that they have earned through their service to our nation,” he told a House panel on veterans affairs.
Dr. Elnahal hit back at ranking member Mike Bost, R-Ill., who is anti-abortion rights and told the story of his own wife’s early pregnancy, which resulted in the birth of his son.
Bost questioned the legality of the VA providing abortions when a law from the 1990s which said that the VA could not provide abortions except in cases of complicated pregnancies.
“It disturbs me that one of your first acts as undersecretary for health is to disobey the law so blatantly, especially on an issue that is quite literally a matter of life and death, for the most innocent, helpless and defenseless among us,” he said.
Dr. Elnahal pushed back on that framing, saying the VA had consulted with the Justice Department “to be responsive to the urgent situation that faced veterans across the country” in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
The panel’s chair, Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., also pointed to a law passed later on that gave the VA power to design its own health benefits packages.
The Biden administration had also expressly affirmed that they were not considering providing abortions on federal land, before the VA announcement weeks later.
Asked the difference between that decision and the VA’s new rule, co-chair of the White House Gender Policy Council Jen Klein said the Biden administration “went through a deep legal analysis and policy analysis” before the decision not to offer the service on federal land.
“If somebody provides the service on federal land or at a federal facility, that’s not within the scope of their job,” she said. “With the veterans, doctors are doing what is within the scope of their federal job.”
Dr. Elnahal said the Veterans Health Administration serves “hundreds of thousands of women veterans of childbearing age.”
Dr. Patricia Hayes, the chief officer of women’s health at the VA, said her agency had been training providers on counseling, reproductive health and abortions in preparation, with 10,000
Hayes said that providers would work “very individually” on veterans who request an abortion.
“The kinds of things that we encounter then are these one to one tragic situations often, where a person has to make that decision for themselves about their own life-threatening medical conditions and the pregnancy that they have” she said.
Committee chair Takano said women veterans were keeping an eye on Thursday’s hearing the outcome of the VA rule.
“[Women veterans] are watching today and listening to what we all have to say. They’re listening closely to who wants to deny them the most basic respect and autonomy, and who wants to support the freedom they fought for,” he said.
