Six Months After New Abortion Leave Policy, Pentagon Doesn’t Know How Many Troops Have Used It – By Rebecca Kheel and Konstantin Toropin (Military.com) / Aug 17, 2023
As an Alabama senator’s ongoing protest over the Pentagon’s abortion leave policy has left three service chief positions vacant, a key question remains: How many service members have actually used the policy to seek abortions?
Nearly six months after it was implemented, the Pentagon can’t answer that question.
That’s because it only asked the military services this month to start tracking data on use of the policy, which covers travel and leave for service members who need abortions or fertility treatments. The Pentagon hadn’t collected it before despite Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s months-long hold on Senate confirmations over what he claims could be thousands of service member abortions. That hold has left the Army, Navy and Marine Corps without permanent uniformed leaders.
On Aug. 1, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Gil Cisneros issued a memo directing the military departments and other Defense Department components to set up ways to collect and report data on cost and usage of the policy, a defense official told Military.com this week.
