VA Barred from Abortions, Flying Delight Flags, Transgender Well being Care Beneath GOP Invoice

Home Republicans moved Tuesday to dam the Department of Veterans Affairs from offering abortion companies, flying LGBTQ+ satisfaction flags at its amenities, and offering gender-affirmation surgical procedure or hormones to transgender veterans.

The trouble, made by GOP lawmakers within the annual VA spending invoice, goals to cease the company from following insurance policies it sees as welcoming to girls and LGBTQ+ individuals. Homosexual civil rights, transgender well being care and abortion have all come underneath growing assault from politicians on the appropriate forward of the 2024 presidential race.

The modification to the spending invoice barring the VA actions — permitted in a party-line 34-27 vote within the Home Appropriations Committee — takes purpose at Biden administration insurance policies that Republicans have spent months griping about. They vowed to roll again the insurance policies after they took the Home majority firstly of the 12 months.

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“That is one thing that ought to be dealt with by Congress, not by the chief department,” Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, the sponsor of the modification and the chairman of the Appropriations Committee’s VA subcommittee, mentioned concerning the VA’s abortion coverage.

The language shouldn’t be prone to survive negotiations with the Senate, which is managed by Democrats and the place an effort to undo the VA’s abortion coverage already failed earlier this 12 months. Nevertheless it indicators that Home Republicans are digging in on their long-held grievances.

In response to final 12 months’s Supreme Courtroom ruling that has allowed states to ban abortion, the VA final 12 months began providing abortions for the primary time in circumstances of rape, incest, or the place the life or well being of the mom is in danger from the being pregnant. As of February, the VA has supplied 34 abortions underneath the coverage, the division informed Congress in a letter in March.

The VA and Democratic lawmakers preserve the VA’s abortion coverage is allowed by a 1996 legislation that requires the division to offer wanted medical care to veterans.

However Republicans instantly cried foul on the coverage, arguing it violates a 1992 legislation that directed the VA to supply reproductive well being care aside from “infertility companies, abortions or being pregnant care,” except that care is required due to a service-connected situation.

Along with barring funding for the abortion coverage, the modification permitted Tuesday would additionally add language to the VA spending invoice modeled off what’s often known as the Hyde Modification. The Hyde Modification is an annual rider included within the Well being and Human Companies spending invoice that prohibits funding from getting used for abortions besides in circumstances of rape, incest, or the place the mom’s life is endangered by the being pregnant.

The nonbinding report accompanying the invoice additionally calls on the VA to commonly report back to Congress on what number of abortions it has supplied underneath the coverage and the way a lot it has price.

The modification permitted Tuesday additionally targets some LGBTQ+-focused insurance policies, which Republicans nationwide have more and more taken purpose at. Republican state legislatures have significantly focused transgender rights with a whole bunch of payments launched this 12 months throughout the nation.

The appropriations modification would prohibit the VA from offering “surgical procedures or hormone therapies for the needs of gender affirming care.” Doing so wouldn’t solely block a yet-to-be carried out coverage on surgical procedure the Biden administration introduced two years in the past, it could additionally roll again protection for hormone remedy the VA has provided since 2013.

The VA informed Army.com final week it has no timeline for covering gender-affirmation surgery for transgender veterans regardless of saying in 2021 that it could take about two years to implement the coverage. The division denied the delay is said to Republican criticism and the rising anti-trans motion.

The Home measure would additionally prohibit the VA from flying any flag “apart from the flag of the USA, the flag of a state, territory, or District of Columbia, the flag of an Indian tribal authorities, the flag of the division, the flag of an armed pressure, or the POW/MIA flag.”

Whereas the modification doesn’t particularly point out the Delight Flag, it comes after Republicans complained that the VA was displaying the rainbow flag at facilities this monthand Appropriations Committee members made clear that barring that flag is the intention of the modification.

Rep. Michael Visitor, R-Miss., who mentioned he proposed the flag language, argued the modification is required to make sure the “work and the message of the VA shouldn’t be divisive, shouldn’t be controversial and isn’t selling a specific gender ideology, however quite is respect(ful) of our veterans.”

The modification would additionally prohibit “any discriminatory motion” from being taken in opposition to somebody who believes “that marriage is, or ought to be acknowledged as, a union of 1 man and one girl.” And it could block any funding from getting used for the “functions of variety, fairness, and inclusion coaching or implementation.”

Democrats on Tuesday lambasted the modification as a laundry listing of Republican assaults on “wokeness,” a time period that conservatives have utilized to a spread of social insurance policies they disagree with, usually specializing in variety and inclusion initiatives.

“I do not know if you understand it, however merely taking a look at a Delight Flag is not going to make you homosexual,” quipped overtly homosexual Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., who chairs the LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus.

“But when that is the modification to essentially be anti-woke, why are you stopping right here? Let’s go full gusto. Let me recommend another issues. Why do not we ban Bud Mild? As a result of I consider ingesting Bud Mild makes you homosexual,” he continued, referencing conservatives who’re upset that the beer maker employed a transgender TikTok star to advertise the drink.

— Rebecca Kheel may be reached at [email protected]. Comply with her on Twitter @reporterkheel.

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