House maintains ban on abortions in military hospitals

By Tom Strode - May 31, 2004 - comment

The U.S. House of Representatives has turned back an effort to lift the ban on abortions in military hospitals overseas.

The House voted 221-202 May 19 against an amendment by Rep. Susan Davis, D.-Calif., to permit female service members and female military dependents to have abortions. Under the rejected amendment, women would have paid for their own abortions. U.S. policy permits a woman to pay for an abortion in overseas military hospitals if her life is threatened or the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

“Although this amendment is presented by the other side as providing for solely self-funded abortions, the fact is the American taxpayer will be forced to pay for the use of the military facility, the procurement of additional equipment needed to perform abortions and the use of military personnel to perform abortions,” Rep. Jim Ryun, R.-Kan., said on the House floor in opposing the amendment. “Military doctors did not sign up to end a baby’s life. It would be wrong for Congress to force these doctors to perform a procedure that many may feel morally objectionable.”

The ban was repealed during the first Clinton administration, but Congress reinstituted it in 1996. Regular efforts since then by abortion-rights advocates in Congress to rescind the ban have failed.

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