Our Service Women Deserve the Best Care
Posted by Greg in 
The MHS administers the health care of our service women.
Yesterday I was on Capitol Hill again, this time giving a brief to Senate staff on the need for our government to provide the full range of medical benefits for women in uniform. Currently federal law does not allow service women to access all of the medical benefits that civilian women get. That is completely unfair. Today, service women are the only group who get their heath care through a federal insurance program that are required to pay out of pocket for abortion services in the case of rape or incest. The federal government pays for these abortions for every other group. Even women incarcerated in federal prisons don’t have to pay out of pocket costs if they are subjected to rape or incest.
Women have always answered the call to serve their nation, and for women who have joined in the past 10 years, that call has come during a time of war. There are currently 355,000 women serving in the military comprising 15% of the force. There are enough women in the recruitment pipeline to increase that number to 20% in the next few years. Women are present in all ranks and duty stations, and in spite of official policy to the contrary, women are serving in combat and making the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. In the words of a fellow briefer yesterday, “Without women our military would fail.”
It is within this context of equal service and shared sacrifice that the need for Congress to provide the full spectrum of quality health care to our women in uniform becomes strikingly clear.
This week Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) introduced an amendment (Amendment #1120) to Senate bill 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act, which would remove the unfair military ban on abortion coverage in cases of rape and incest. The NDAA is scheduled for a vote tomorrow and I urge you to contact your Senator right now and ask them to support this amendment.
The military ban on abortion coverage in cases of rape and incest is at odds with federal policy as it applies to all other federal insurance programs including Medicare, the Indian Health Service, Medicaid and federal prisons. It is particularly shameful to deny the same care to our women who selflessly serve when such care is readily and freely available to other women who choose not to wear the uniform.
As a former commander, it was drilled into me that troop welfare is second only to mission accomplishment, and the two go hand in hand. If you want to accomplish the mission, you must care for your troops. Thus the military has an obligation to care for it’s personnel, and in particular it has a deeper responsibility to care for service women who are raped. The incidence of rape and sexual assault in the military is tremendously high. The DOD estimates there were 19,000 sexual assaults in the military last year alone. That’s more than 52 a day. More than 85% of these assaults go unreported, and they occur in military units both stateside and overseas. According to the Rape, Abuse, Incest National Network (RAINN), at least 5% of one-time unprotected sex results in pregnancy, and for rapes that number is usually higher since rape victims are subject to multiple assaults. Using the DOD estimates, that means that last year it is possible that 950 women became pregnant due to military sexual assaults. The DOD also reports the majority of women who are raped are junior enlisted (E-3 or below), a group that is comprised of younger women who have the lowest salaries and the fewest resources available to pay for medical procedures that their insurance does not cover. An E-3 makes about $490 per week, gross. The last thing a service woman should have to worry about when dealing with the trauma of a sexual assault is struggling to find the funds to end the resulting pregnancy.
If a service woman is raped then forced to pay for abortion services outside of a Military Treatment Facility, she faces additional challenges. Overseas, service women must deal with language and cultural barriers, facilities and doctors that may be substandard and unregulated, or the service woman could be in a country where there are no abortion services at all. Here in the U.S., service women do not enjoy freedom of movement like their civilian counterparts. They are strictly accountable to their chain of command 24/7/365. Every command also has established leave and liberty policies that place restrictions on how far from base a service woman can go when she is given time off. For travel within 24-48 hours restrictions are around 50-75 miles, and for extended time off the restrictions can be anywhere from 250-500 miles. In order to travel beyond those limits, special permission from the commander is required, and that usually requires disclosing to the commander the purpose of the trip. This means that what should be a confidential medical matter between a woman and her doctor is now the business of her boss. And given the limited number of facilities providing abortions – in some cases there is only one provider for an entire state – If a commander denies the special liberty request, the service woman’s options are severely limited.
I think we all agree that everyone who volunteers to serves this country deserves the best this country can offer, and that includes having access to the full spectrum of health services. Senator Shaheen’s amendment would allow for that and eliminate an unfair disparity that does a great harm to service women, and military readiness as a whole. I urge you to contact your Senators prior to tomorrow’s vote and tell them to support our women in uniform by supporting NDAA Amendment #1120.
