WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Dozens of Republican lawmakers issued a sharp warning Thursday to the Biden administration’s Department of Defense following the agency’s memorandum promising to help fund abortion-related expenses for military service members and their families.
The December 15 letter, addressed to U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, was led by Reps. Chris Smith of New Jersey and Vicky Hartzler of Missouri as well as Sens. Steve Daines of Montana and James Lankford of Oklahoma. A total of 66 senators and congressmen signed the letter in total.
The Republicans affirmed they are “in strong opposition to the memorandum entitled, ‘Ensuring Access to Reproductive Health Care,’” which was published by the agency on October 20, 2022.
In the letter, the lawmakers blasted the Pentagon’s promise to finance abortion for service members following the landmark rollback of Roe v. Wade and subsequent enactment of a slew of statewide abortion restrictions.
Thank you Rep. Chris Smith, @RepHartzler, @SteveDaines and @SenatorLankford for leading this letter urging the Department of Defense to immediately rescind their illegal abortion travel memo
More info on the memo from @MaryMargOlohan at @DailySignal: https://t.co/AfXqM1Yzce
— SBA Pro-Life America | 72% 🇺🇸 support 15 weeks (@sbaprolife) December 15, 2022
The Pentagon had promised in its memorandum that it would provide financial backing for its service members and their family members who want to travel outside of pro-life states to kill their preborn babies.
The Republicans said they “are appalled by the flagrant disregard for the law expressed by the Department in this memorandum,” and demanded a meeting to “reiterate our expectation that this memorandum be immediately withdrawn” by January 15 at the latest.
They advised the Biden administration that the memo “violates decades-old federal law prohibiting the Department of Defense (DOD) from funding elective abortion (which includes facilitating such abortions)”.
Accordingly, the senators and congressmen called on the agency “to immediately rescind” the memo.
READ: Pentagon to fund out-of-state abortions for servicemembers with taxpayer dollars
The pro-life lawmakers explained in their letter that the DOD memo, by promising to “establish travel and transportation allowances for Service members and their dependents … to facilitate official travel to access noncovered reproductive health care that is unavailable within the local area of a Service member’s permanent duty station” ran afoul of 10 U.S.C. § 1093, which they said had been “made permanent” by Congress decades ago in 1984.
“While the memorandum claims that this policy will be implemented consistent with federal law, funding travel and transportation to obtain non-covered, elective abortions through the DOD would, in and of itself violate federal law,” the December 15 letter read, adding that the plan “also contradicts DOD’s past recognition, interpretation, and implementation of this law.”
According to the Republican lawmakers, existing law as well as “Congressional intent” have clearly established that “the U.S. military may not fund elective abortion.”
The letter comes as U.S. President Joe Biden, a self-professed Catholic, has forcefully and repeatedly affirmed his commitment to ensuring that women can still legally kill their unborn babies in the U.S. despite the Supreme Court’s ruling that there is no constitutional “right to abortion.”
Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s Department of Defense isn’t the only major group that has responded to the historic pro-life victory of the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June with a promise to finance work-arounds to skirt life-saving laws.
A bevy of major corporations including Amazon, Apple, Citibank, Salesforce, Starbucks, Tesla, Microsoft, Walmart, and Yelp, have also promised to cover travel expenses for pregnant employees in pro-life states to kill their babies.
In the rush to provide post-Roe abortion benefits for employees, DICK’S Sporting Goods faced a federal civil rights complaint this summer for offering financial awards for abortion without an equivalent benefit for childbirth, LifeSiteNews previously reported.
Meanwhile, moves by major corporations to bankroll abortion expenses for employees won the adulation of pro-abortion politicians like outgoing Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and leftist California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Pro-abortion governors like Newsom, his fellow West Coast governors in Oregon and Washington, and others including New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, have also responded to life-saving legislation in pro-life states by solidifying protections for the legal murder of the unborn within their own state borders.
In a statement released following the overturning of Roe, Newsom promised he and the governors of Oregon and Washington “will fight like hell to protect our rights and our values,” namely widespread abortion access.