Thanks to the Bush Administration, tens of thousands of women serving abroad in the US military are being denied their freedoms, even as they are asked to fight to defend ours.
As NARAL points out on its very useful website, American servicewomen and female military dependents are currently banned from accessing abortion services–even when using their own money–at US military medical facilities overseas. They don’t even have the same right Medicaid recipients do to public support in cases of rape or incest.
Senators Barbara Boxer and Olympia Snowe have proposed a provision in the Defense Authorization Act that seeks to rectify at least part of these deplorable, and probably unconstitutional, conditions by allowing servicewomen who are victims of rape to receive abortion care. Given recent reports that sexual-assault cases are on the rise in the military, this is a particularly important time to demand that all women in the military be granted the same reproductive rights as their civilian counterparts.
Click here to support the Boxer-Snow provision, click here to receive news from NARAL’s Choice Action Network and click here to support NARAL’s work toward full reproductive freedom for all women.
