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EXCLUSIVE: The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will announce Friday that it is reversing a Biden-era exception allowing abortion services to be provided to veterans, in what the department cited as likely counter to the current medical benefits package prescribed by law.
In a memo obtained by Fox News Digital, the VA said it will return its medical package and “CHAMPVA” benefits to the time preceding a September 2022 agency rule that removed the long-standing abortion restrictions.
The 1999 medical benefits package that remains intact, prescribed under the outline of a 1992 law, does not authorize abortion services because they are not considered “needed” under the statute.
“It is without question that VA has the authority to bar provision of abortion services through the VA medical benefits package to veterans,” the memo read, adding that the former VA leadership made its adjustment in favor of providing abortions in response to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that effectively overturned Roe v. Wade.
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Then-Rep. Gillespie Montgomery, D-Miss., laid out in his 1992 Veterans Health Care Act that the agency could provide women with multiple healthcare services, including Papanicolaou Tests (“Pap-smears”), mammography and “general reproductive care, including the management of menopause.”
However, the law explicitly precluded “infertility services [and] abortions” unless they relate to a pregnancy with “risks of complication [that] are increased by a service-connected condition.”
“Prior to the Biden administration’s politically motivated change in 2022, federal law and longstanding precedent across Democrat and Republican administrations prevented VA from providing abortions and abortion counseling,” a VA spokesperson told Fox News Digital in discussing the policy reversal.
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“VA’s proposed rule will reinstate the pre-Biden bipartisan policy, bringing the department back in line with historical norms.”
The VA memo added that the Dobbs decision was intended to prevent federal overreach and return control of abortion policy to the states, and that the agency prior to current Secretary Doug Collins’ tenure “did the exact opposite” of what it said its 2022 policy change was intended to do in that regard.
“[It] creat[ed] a purported federal entitlement to abortion for veterans where none had existed before, and without regard to state law,” the VA said.
“For nearly 50 years, and across a slew of federal programs, including Medicaid, the Child Health Insurance Program, TriCare, Federal Employee Health Benefits Program, and others, Congress has consistently drawn a bright line between elective abortion and health care services that taxpayers would support.”
The agency also emphasized that its policy reversal will not prevent pregnant women facing life-threatening circumstances from receiving care in those instances.
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