GOP Mess: Sen. Tuberville (R-AL) Arrogant Liar re: Military Promotions vs Abortions

Smug, arrogant, liar harming National Defense

UPDATE on the post that follows: On Sen. Tuberville (R-AL) and his military hold on promotions over his wild abortion stance and lies is addressed and fact checked in this fine CNN article with this headline:

“Fact Check: Sen. Tommy Tuberville overestimates number of abortions military women would seek out under new DOD policies, researchers say”

Key Parts (boxed and formatted to fit the blog):

CNN — Despite frequent claims from Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama that new Pentagon reproductive health policies would result in thousands more abortions a year, the number estimated by a study Tuberville himself cites is far lower, though nearly impossible to actually know.

Tuberville is protesting new Pentagon reproductive health policies, which provide a travel allowance to service members and their dependents who must cross state lines to get an abortion because of where they are stationed. 

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade last year, many states had so-called “trigger laws” go into place, immediately restricting abortion access. 

Now, Tuberville is holding up hundreds of senior military nominations and promotions that must be confirmed by the Senate to protest the policies.

DOD said earlier this year that because service members cannot choose what states they are stationed in, the Pentagon would provide up to three weeks of leave and a travel allowance for service members and dependents who have to travel out of state to receive care. 

The leave also applied to people who were traveling to receive other reproductive health care not covered by the military, including in vitro fertilization (IVF) and intrauterine insemination (IUI).

In a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in December, Tuberville referenced a briefing he said he received from the acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs writing in part: “The new policies would increase DoD subsidized abortions by as much as 4,100 per year. That estimate does not include dependents, which your policy also intends to cover, who might seek assistance in obtaining an abortion.”

The new policies providing a travel allowance to receive an abortion do apply to dependents.

Tuberville’s office told CNN that the number he is referencing came from a study by the RAND Corporation, a research organization which often conducts research on behalf of the DOD. 

Tuberville then repeated a similar claim during an interview on CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlan Collins.”

He said: “We’ve done a couple of dozen abortions in the military for the last 40 years, a couple dozen a year. Now we’re going to have 4,000 to 5,000 a year because this new rule, this new supposedly law that this administration’s pushing through. So let’s think about the unborn.”

Facts First: Tuberville’s claim is incorrect. He is misleadingly comparing the number of covered abortions provided by DOD health facilities with an estimate of how many women in the military receive abortions outside of those health facilities, have ectopic pregnancies or still births annually. RAND researchers.

One whom was directly involved in the study Tuberville cites, told CNN that Tuberville is significantly overestimating the number of women in the military who would take advantage of the new DOD policies.

The survey being referenced by Tuberville was conducted in 2020 and sponsored by DOD While it’s not possible to know exactly how many people would use the Pentagon’s new policies to be reimbursed for travel to receive an abortion, the estimates calculated through the 2020 survey provide a window into how many women in uniform may seek out abortion care.

Dr. Sarah Meadows, senior sociologist at RAND said: “In the survey, I asked women who had been pregnant in the last 12 months how their pregnancy ended: in a birth, miscarriage, or other. The other category included ectopic pregnancies, still births and abortions. The other thing to keep in mind is that’s total. That is every active-duty service woman in every state in the continental United States, to include Alaska and Hawaii. So, of those, only a certain percentage will need to travel to receive abortion care … So, people use those numbers, but it’s really only like half, 46% actually, of those women who are seeking an abortion will need to travel to get it based on where they live.”

Meadows said other data on pregnancies led researchers to believe the bulk of the pregnancies marked as ending in “other” were abortions. That number was then taken by RAND and applied to the total population of women in the military, which gave them an estimated range of how many pregnancies of members of the military would end in one of the “other” categories. Even Meadow’s estimate of about 2,000 assumes all of the women who would need to travel to get an abortion would take advantage of the Pentagon’s new policies, which even she said is not likely.

Dr. Meadows concluded saying: “Previous data shows that a not insubstantial percentage of women don’t feel comfortable even getting contraceptive care through military health facilities. They don’t want the military health system to know what they’re doing, essentially. So, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that … there’s still this barrier, that you’re going to have to go to your commander and say, ‘I need this, you know, administrative leave,’ and then I have to process the paperwork to get reimbursed for travel and my hotel and per diem.”

Dr. Kyleanne Hunter, RAND senior political scientist said most military are barely comfortable telling their commanders of planned pregnancies because of long-existing stigma adding: “What we do know as well from other research surveys, but also a lot of focus group research that has been done in the past, is that service women are often very uncomfortable even telling commanders about pregnancies that are wanted. There’s a lot of stigma around just reporting a planned or wanted pregnancy. So again, I think that we don’t have an estimate, but it’s a very reasonable assumption that having to go through the process of getting the travel claim will provide an additional barrier.”

Both Hunter and Meadows pushed back on the idea that the Pentagon’s new policy was providing more abortions as Tuberville has claimed is factually incorrect to say the military is paying for abortion.

Federal policy says DOD is not allowed to provide abortions in DOD health facilities outside of these three exceptions: Cases of rape, incest, and when the life of the mother is at risk.

A defense official told reporters last year that between 2016 and 2021, a total of 91 covered abortions were performed – that comes out to roughly 15 a year – nowhere near Tuberville’s number; thus he knowingly lied.

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My 2 Cents: I may get blasted for this post, but based on being a retired Marine (former enlisted and retired officer), 2 years of combat in VN, and later as a DOD civilian with 44 years of service all in the military arena, I think I have earned the right to strongly criticize Sen. Tuberville, which I am.

So, I say once again Sen. Tuberville is a lying fool and he must be held accountable by his own party leaders as most are mum right now. 

Plus, no one person in the Senate should have that kind of power he is displaying now. It impacts the military big time and it is a direct threat to the women in the service today and directly harmful to our national security and safety. 

The voters in AL should toss Tuberville out of office in the next cycle when he comes up for reelection. 

He is unfit to serve. 

He is a disgrace to the people of AL.

He is dishonorable to the nation.

And, he is dishonest to all women honorably serving in the military. 

Thanks for stopping by.