Trump Admin Moves to Restore Long‑Standing Ban on Taxpayer‑Funded Abortions at VA Hospitals

The proposal would restore a decades‑old policy excluding abortions from taxpayer‑funded services at hospitals operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

A Veterans Affairs medical center in Los Angeles on July 14, 2025. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

The Trump administration has announced a proposal to rescind a Biden-era rule and bar medical centers operated by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) from performing taxpayer-funded abortions except when the mother’s life is in danger.

The regulatory change will be formally proposed by the VA in the Aug. 4 edition of the Federal Register, with a 30-day public comment period to follow before it can enter into force.

With the move, the agency is looking to bring back its pre-2022 policy banning abortions and abortion counseling in its medical benefits package and its civilian health and medical program, restoring restrictions that had been in place since 1999.

“We take this action to ensure that VA provides only needed medical services to our nation’s heroes and their families,” the agency wrote in the proposal.

In 2022, under the Biden administration, the department amended its regulations to expand exceptions to the provision of abortions in VA-operated medical centers to include instances of rape, incest, or general health concerns. Ahead of the change, a number of Democratic lawmakers urged the VA to change the rule to make abortion services more widely accessible after the U.S. Supreme Court effectively overturned Roe v. Wade and handed abortion-related decision authority back to individual states.

“This decision makes it even more critical that veterans receive access to the reproductive care to which they are entitled,” a group of Democratic senators wrote in a letter to then-VA Secretary Denis McDonough, referring to the Supreme Court ruling, which prompted a number of states to restrict abortions.

“Thus, the [VA] must urgently begin rulemaking to allow veterans and eligible dependents to receive abortions and all abortion-related services,” they added.

The rule change was met at the time with strong pushback from a number of Republican lawmakers, who said that it violated federal law.

“VA is in clear violation of settled law by currently offering abortion services nationwide. With each week that passes, the number of abortions performed at VA facilities grows,” Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.), chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, said in a February 2023 statement.

The Biden-era rule also faced legal challenges, including by a Texas nurse who worked in a VA-operated medical facility and argued that the regulation was against federal law and violated her own religious beliefs.

In its proposal to rescind the 2022 rule, the VA said that abortions are “not ‘needed’ medical services” under federal law and that, for decades, the VA had correctly and consistently interpreted the rules in that manner—and therefore did not cover abortions in its medical benefits packages. It also said that the law clearly allows the VA to prohibit the provision of abortion services through the VA medical package.

The VA added that, under current leadership, it views the Biden-era decision as having contradicted decades of federal policy “against forced taxpayer funding for abortion” and that its proposed rule change restores the pre-2022 status, namely that it will not fund abortions except when a physician certifies that the life of the mother would be endangered if the baby were carried to term.

In an Aug. 1 statement, Bost praised the VA’s proposed reversal.

“It was wrong that the Biden administration violated settled law in 2022 and began offering abortion services through VA,“ Bost said in a statement. ”We pushed back hard on this disastrous policy over the last two years to hold the Biden-Harris administration accountable and protect the lives of the unborn.

“It’s simple–taxpayers do not want their hard-earned money spent on paying for abortions–and VA’s sole focus should always be providing service-connected health care and benefits to the veterans they serve.”

Katie O'Connor, a director at the National Women’s Law Center, said the proposed rule change would harm servicemembers by “stripping veterans of their reproductive freedom and creating even more confusion about where they can turn for care.”