For months now, thanks to one man who has never served in uniform a day in his life, the United States Senate has been failing our troops and military families.
In March, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., began blocking all senior Department of Defense nominations, protesting a Defense Department policy that helps service members stationed in anti-choice states travel for basic reproductive care. With that decision, my Republican colleague effectively told the country that his own anti-choice agenda was worth jeopardizing our military readiness and our national security.
Since that day, Tuberville’s partisan charade has stalled roughly 250 military promotions. And as of this week, his stunt has left the United States Marine Corps without a commandant for the first time since before World War I.
Tuberville is endangering our national security because he’s so anxious to earn a pat on the back from Fox News.
This ploy is shameful and disgraceful; misogynistic and sadistic; self-interested yet self-defeating. In other words, it’s a perfect snapshot of today’s GOP.
Let me be very clear: the Defense Department is not funding abortions. It simply allows service members reimbursement for travel if they are forced to make their way to a state with less draconian reproductive policies. There, they can receive a range of health care services, from IVF to, yes, legal abortions.
Yet Sen. Tuberville has decided to obscure these facts, making it seem as if the Department of Defense is actually bankrolling abortions. He’s injected politics into what should be an entirely nonpartisan promotions process, as his extremist stance on women’s rights blocks talented nominees from taking on the challenges of their next positions, leaves critical gaps in our military leadership and impairs our military readiness.
Sen. Tuberville isn’t doing this out of concern over the qualifications of the nominees. No. He’s endangering our national security because he’s so anxious to earn a pat on the back from Fox News that he’d throw a fit over a policy that, in this post-Dobbs world, preserves military women’s rights to bodily autonomy. He’s not alone: on Thursday the House voted almost entirely on partisan lines to rescind the Pentagon policy.
The GOP’s tantrum over this Defense Department rule redefines the word hypocrisy. I served in the Army, so I know firsthand that Republicans were just fine with me using my body as I saw fit — when I chose to use it to fight wars on our country’s behalf. They were even OK with me leaving parts of it strewn across a battlefield in Iraq in defense of this great nation. Many thanked me for my service — for making that incredibly personal choice about my own life. I know the same is true for other female service members and veterans, too.
So my question is, precisely when do anti-choice folks like Tuberville think that we military women no longer have that basic human right to make our own decisions about our own health?
Because that’s what he’s saying with this blockade — and if he’s successful in overturning the Defense Department‘s decree, thousands of service members could be stripped of their right to bodily autonomy just because they’ve sworn an oath to defend their country.








