In the military, service members don’t have much control over where they live or travel. That means they could be stationed on a base in a state that essentially bans abortion and have no access to reproductive care when they need it.
That’s why U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III last October directed all branches of the military to set up policies offering a pregnant service person administrative leave (separate from their regular leave) to obtain an abortion as well as travel and transportation allowances when reproductive health care is unavailable in the local area where the person is stationed. The new policies went into effect earlier this year. (Expense allowances are also available for people who must travel a far distance to get fertility treatments not covered by the military.)
Austin announced the changes several months after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, noting in a memo that service members might be forced to travel greater distances and pay more out-of-pocket expenses for reproductive health care. Those conditions, he wrote in a memo, qualified as “unusual, extraordinary, hardship or emergency circumstances” that could make it difficult to recruit and retain a highly qualified force.
