(LifeSiteNews) — Abortions among members of the U.S. military and their families have dropped to a five-year low, according to the most recent data available from the United States’ Defense Health Agency (DHA).
The Dallas Express reports that it obtained the records via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. They revealed that the military’s TRICARE health service program recorded 49 covered abortions (those sought for rape, incest, or alleged threats to the mother’s life) in 2021, but just five as of June 11, 2025, the most recent date the records covered.
The decline can likely be attributed at least in part to the Trump administration’s moves to forbid the use of federal tax dollars for “elective” abortions. “The data doesn’t show what reasons women may have had for getting an abortion, but they are likely similar to those of the general public,” National Right to Life responded to the news. “We know that the Biden administration used every lever at its disposal to push unlimited abortion and this included policy changes in the military. Under the Trump administration, policies pushing abortion have been nullified or reversed.”
However, Life Education & Action founder Rich DeOtte sounded a more cautionary note, warning that the abortion industry’s shift from surgical abortions to in-home abortion pills – which are technically illegal to mail across state lines under a law that the federal government still declines to enforce – complicates efforts to discern whether abortions are really dropping or just shifting to a less traceable method.
“It’s difficult to know how to characterize the decline in physical abortions in the military,” DeOtte said. “In general, pharmaceutical abortions have increased substantially since the Texas Heartbeat Act and Dobbs. Physical abortions in states like Texas have declined and pharmaceutical abortions have increased.”
Within weeks of returning to office, Trump began enforcing the Hyde Amendment against direct funding of most abortions, reinstated the Mexico City Policy that forbids non-governmental organizations from using taxpayer dollars for most abortions abroad, and cut millions in pro-abortion subsidies by freezing U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spending.
In March, the Trump administration froze Title X “family planning” grants to nonprofits it said violated its executive orders on immigration and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, including Planned Parenthood affiliates in nine states.
In July, the president signed into law his controversial “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (BBB), a wide-ranging policy package that includes a one-year ban on federal tax dollars going through Medicaid to entities that commit abortions for reasons other than rape, incest, or supposed threats to the mother’s life.
Other Republicans have proposed standalone measures to fully cut off Planned Parenthood’s government funding: the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act, which permanently bans federal funds from being used for abortion; and the Defund Planned Parenthood Act, which disqualifies Planned Parenthood and its affiliates specifically.