Trump Administration Implements Its First National Abortion Ban

On Monday, the Department of Veterans Affairs quietly circulated a memo that it will no longer provide abortions or abortion counseling to veterans or their families, including for cases involving rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. In other words, without passing new legislation, the Trump administration has successfully implemented its first national abortion ban.

The ban was literally outlined by Project 2025—the fascist playbook Trump once claimed he knew nothing about, which ordered the next conservative government to “rescind all [VA] clinical policy directives that are contrary to principles of conservative governance starting with abortion services and gender reassignment surgery.” (Next up on the list appears to be bringing back child labor.)

“Everyone should be appalled by this heartless policy,” Nancy Northup, President and CEO at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told Jezebel in a statement. “Veterans risked their lives to defend our safety and freedom—and now the Trump Administration is taking away theirs.”

The memo was first obtained by Democracy Forward, and stated that the new rule was “effective immediately” and that the agency “must comply.” It follows a December 18 directive from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), which challenged a Biden-era policy from 2022 that the VA can provide abortions if the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest, or for the health of the mother. (It was implemented after Roe v. Wade was overturned.) Specifically, the directive ruled that U.S.C. Title 38—which lists the kinds of care veterans can qualify for—does not account for abortions and counseling services.

The Trump administration first floated the proposal to roll back the provision in August—writing that the Biden-era rule was the “exact opposite of preventing overreach, creating a purported federal entitlement to abortions for veterans where none had existed before and without regard to state law”—all but ensuring this would be coming before the end of the year.

We’ve reached out to the White House for comment and will update if we hear back.

Following the news, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wa.) condemned this “backdoor move.” “Over the past year, Trump and Republicans have shown they will do everything in their power to restrict abortion access so they can ultimately ban abortion nationwide,” she said in a statement. “President Trump can pretend all he wants that he supports exceptions for rape and incest, but the reality is that his administration is right now banning abortion care in exactly those circumstances.”

In the first year after the Biden-era policy was implemented, the VA provided or covered at least 88 abortions: nine because it risked the life of the mother, and 15 pregnancies that resulted from rape. The policy was then expanded in 2024 to include counseling for veterans’ families.

Per the VA, women are the fastest-growing group of veterans, and about one in three report sexual assault or harassment during their military service. Sarah Outterson, the chief federal legislative counsel for Policy and Advocacy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told The Intercept at the time that pregnancy is “riskier” for veterans who suffer from higher rates of sexual assault and PTSD. Further, with more than a dozen states having a near or total abortion ban, the VA remained the last place for veterans to receive abortion services—and most of these abortion-banned states are where more than half of all women veterans live, according to the National Partnership for Women & Families.

In 2023, Republicans voted to ban the VA from providing abortions (they also wanted to ban VA facilities from flying the pride flag); then, months later, they threatened to subpoena the VA in order to obtain records on veterans who had received an abortion.

“It’s shameful and indefensible,” Murray continued in her statement. “The Trump administration may think they can quietly rip away women veterans’ health care and avoid accountability—they are wrong. I will never stop speaking out against Republican attacks on reproductive freedom or fighting back to protect veterans’ health care.”

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