The Pentagon’s Abortion War With Tommy Tuberville

The Senate held a hearing for America’s next top military officer on Tuesday, but from the headlines you’d think the biggest threat to U.S. security is a former Auburn football coach. Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s Pentagon blockade is a kamikaze run, but the Defense Department is the aggressor on both the law and politics of abortion.

Sen. Tuberville has been holding up hundreds of military promotions for months over a Pentagon policy to offer leave and expenses for service members who travel to another state for an abortion. Utterly predictable is that Democrats would exploit the Senator’s blockade to paint Republicans as obstructionists who are compromising military readiness. The military hasn’t ceased to function, though the effects ripple as officers wait to relocate families or start a new post.

Gen. C.Q. Brown, the nominee to run the Joint Chiefs, told Congress that the military may “lose talent,” if officers decide the headache is one more reason to make the next tour their last. This is not a political winner for Republicans. President Biden knows it and is beating up Sen. Tuberville.

Yet the Biden Administration is also holding these officers hostage to compel taxpayers to pay for abortions. The Defense Department reinvented its travel policy to cover abortion after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. It’s “a blatant attempt to circumvent numerous federal statutes that distance the military from abortion-related decisions,” as a March letter from Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee put it.

The Pentagon isn’t responding to a crisis in the force. Women have long served abroad in countries that restrict abortion. The Senate GOP letter asked the Pentagon for information on how many women service members or families have declined tours in places such as South Korea or Germany based on concerns about abortion access. The committee says the Pentagon hasn’t produced such data.

The Biden Pentagon is outside what little national consensus exists on abortion. Some 60% of Americans oppose using tax dollars to pay for abortions, according to one survey this year. Mr. Biden opposed taxpayer payments for abortion until he ran for President in 2019.

Most corrosive is that some in the brass are joining the political fight. Lt. Gen. Andrew Rohling, deputy commanding general for the U.S. Army in Europe and Africa, used the word “reprehensible” to describe Sen. Tuberville’s blockade, while for some reason talking to Punchbowl News.

One of Gen. Rohling’s briefs is explaining U.S. support for Ukraine to a skeptical public. He’s scorching his credibility with the more than 40% of Republicans who think Washington is doing too much for Kyiv. Many of these Republicans hold deep moral convictions about abortion. Such lapses in judgment from general officers erode the support the military needs to confront threats from Russia to China.

Still, Sen. Tuberville should be looking for an exit from his box canyon. He can put his objections on the record with an amendment to the defense policy bill.

But the Defense Department deliberately waded into a live political fight and is mortgaging the public’s trust to make a statement on social policy. The Pentagon can’t then plead innocence when Americans conclude that the U.S. military has been co-opted for partisan purposes.