Project 2025: Where Veterans Can't Get Abortion or Gender-Affirming Care
Republican attacks on active duty and veteran care show what they will do to women and LGBTQ people nationwide (Scroll to the end to listen)
For active-duty members of the military, sexual assault is a constant on-the-job threat. Whether it happens between service members in peacetime or during captivity as part of war, sexual assault in the military is a daily possibility.
The Department of Defense compiles bi-annual data on sexual assaults in the military. (Fact Sheet HERE.) The latest numbers are from 2023 and represent a small decrease over the 2021 report.
6.8% of military women reported being sexually assaulted (2023), down from 8.4% (2021 - the highest percentage ever reported)
1.3% of military men reported being sexually assaulted (2023), down from 1.5% (2021)
In 2023, the Department of Defense fielded 8,515 reports of sexual assault, a decrease from the 8,924 reports received in FY22
Notably, the report credits these decreases to Lloyd Austin’s leadership
Why do these numbers matter? Because women who are victims of sexual assault can become pregnant. Republicans do not want female service members to be allowed access to abortion at VA health centers, even when they have been raped.
The current VA leadership is focusing very publicly on “social equity and inclusion” within departmental policy discussions toward ends that will affect only a small minority of the veterans who use the VA. For the first time, the VA is allowing access to abortion services, a medical procedure unrelated to military service that the VA lacks the legal authority and clinical proficiency to perform. In addition to continuing the grotesque culture of violence against the child in the womb, these sociopolitical initiatives and ideological indoctrinations distract from the department’s core missions.
Project 2025, page 642
The military also chose to invest in the mental, emotional, and physical wellbeing of its troops by providing gender counseling and gender reassignment surgery at VA health centers. Service personnel have taken advantage of this health benefit. Data is from 2021.
The Pentagon has spent $15 million in the past five years to treat 1,892 transgender troops, including $11.5 million for psychotherapy and $3.1 million for surgeries, according to Defense Department data provided to Military.com.
As of May, 1,892 military personnel have been diagnosed and treated for gender dysphoria, including 726 Army soldiers, 576 Navy sailors, 449 Air Force airmen and 141 Marines, according to DHA spokesman Peter Graves.
The Palm Center, a public policy think tank that focuses on LGBT issues, estimated in 2018 that 14,707 transgender troops serve in the U.S. armed forces, including nearly 9,000 on active duty and 5,727 in the reserves.
SOURCE: Military.com
Here’s how the framers of Project 2025, the Fascist Republican Party and their billionaire overlords feel about gender reassignment surgery and support for members of our armed forces.
VETERANS HEALTH ADMINISTRATION (VHA) Needed Reforms l Rescind all departmental clinical policy directives that are contrary to principles of conservative governance starting with abortion services and gender reassignment surgery. Neither aligns with service-connected conditions that would warrant VA’s providing this type of clinical care, and both follow the Left’s pernicious trend of abusing the role of government to further its own agenda.
Project 2025, page 644
As goes the military, so goes the nation.
Republicans are doing little to hide their intention to enact a national abortion ban. Red states like Florida are already restricting access to gender-affirming care, even for adults. A nationwide ban on gender-affirming care, including hormone treatments for those who have already transitioned, is not a hyperbolic conclusion to draw from P2025 language and from what red state Republicans are already doing.
Project 2025’s Republican Party platform will force raped service members to give birth, deny our troops vital mental health support, and coerce people to live in bodies with which they do not identify. Republicans loathe those who serve our country. Honor our veterans and our troops. Defeat Republicans at every level of government in November.
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Calls to Action to Keep P2025 From Ruining YOUR Life
Check your voter registration or register to vote: I Will Vote
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Report a Project 2025 incident: Not On Our Watch
Mail postcards to swing-state voters: Postcards to Swing States (they have a wait list, but still sign up!) or for no wait list, go to Activate America
A friend told me about what happened. How can vets and people who care about them not see how ruthless republicans are?
Andra, did you see this in the news? Underscores your point that today's GOP actually couldn't give a rat's ass about veterans:
https://www.rawstory.com/republican-convention-police-shooting-milwaukee/