Senate Republicans on Wednesday rejected a long-shot legislative maneuver from Democrats aimed at reversing the Department of Veterans Affairs’ abrupt re-implementation of an abortion ban for veterans and their dependents.
Senators voted 48-50 for a procedural motion advancing a Congressional Review Act resolution, a mechanism that allows Congress to overturn certain federal agency rules.
Republican Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, joined Democrats in supporting the motion. Collins and Murkowski, who have historically supported abortion rights, also bucked their party in 2023, when Republicans used a CRA to unsuccessfully try to overturn Biden’s rule to allow the VA to provide abortion services.
The effort was always unlikely to succeed, given that CRA resolutions must be adopted in the House and Senate and Republicans control both chambers. But when Democrats announced the plan in January, they argued it would force Republicans to go on the record about abortion coverage for veterans and their dependents under the limited circumstances that the Biden administration allowed.
Meanwhile, Republicans argued the Biden-era policy was a matter of federal overreach, given that the VA did not cover abortions prior to 2022.
Still, the vote gave Democrats another opportunity to push back against the GOP’s ongoing — and politically unpopular — efforts to further restrict abortion access nationwide.
“We simply can’t let the Trump administration deprive women veterans of the care they need when they most need it,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said at a news conference ahead of the vote.
Several Democrats — including Blumenthal, Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. — called for Republicans to support the measure in comments on the Senate floor before the vote.
The Biden administration made limited abortion procedures and counseling — in cases of rape, incest or when a pregnancy endangered the mother’s health — available to veterans and their dependents enrolled in the VA health care system beginning in late 2022, after the Supreme Court’s overruling of Roe v. Wade.
But the Trump administration abruptly reversed the policy in December, citing a Justice Department memo that concluded the Biden rule was not legally sound, as MS NOW first reported. The DOJ’s interpretation allowed the VA rule to take effect more than a month earlier than it would have under the normal regulatory timeline.
Almost 500,000 female veterans of reproductive age are enrolled in VA health care plans, with more than 112,000 enrolled in CHAMPVA, the program for dependents, according to VA data shared with the Senate committee. More than half of those enrollees live in states that otherwise have abortion bans or significant restrictions in place. The CRA resolution was endorsed by more than a dozen veterans’ and reproductive rights groups. Representatives of some of those groups emphasized Wednesday that women veterans — the fastest-growing segment of the veteran population — now face more abortion restrictions than both people in federal prisons and low-income people on Medicaid, who can access the procedure in cases of rape, incest, or when their lives are endangered under the Bureau of Prisons and the Hyde Amendment, respectively. “To carve out reproductive health is not just a gap in coverage,” Jess Finucan, director of policy and advocacy at the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, told reporters prior to the vote. “It’s a failure of responsibility and a disgrace to the veterans who were told this country would take care of them.” Kayla Williams, a veteran and senior advisor to the Vet Voice Foundation, an advocacy group, condemned the ban and noted that an estimated one-in-three women veterans experience military sexual trauma, which includes both sexual assault and harassment. “Preventing women veterans who have been raped from getting abortions is despicable. Barring women veterans with PTSD from even talking to their doctors about abortion care is appalling,” Williams said. “Stopping a teenage girl on CHAMPVA who is the victim of incest from getting an abortion is repulsive.” In the House, Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif., who is the ranking member for the Health subcommittee on the House Veterans’ Affairs panel, is leading the resolution with Rep. Mark Takano of California, the top Democrat on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. But the resolution is unlikely to get a vote there, given that House lawmakers face a higher bar than senators to successfully force a floor vote.
Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky. Recommended
