Another Trump administration rollback on abortion access goes into effect on February 1, this time for US veterans, including 2.1 million women. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has reversed a Biden administration reform that allowed veterans to access abortion care as part of their health benefits package.
The rule, published at the end of December 2025, means that VA health benefits will not cover abortion or even abortion counseling for veterans and for others on their insurance. The only exception is when a physician certifies that a woman’s life is in danger.
There is no exception for grave risks to a pregnant person’s health.
For conditions like severe hypertension, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, or certain mental health issues, and complications during pregnancy such as gestational diabetes, the line between health-threatening and life-threatening is blurry. Women should not have to wait for a condition to escalate to the point where their life is at risk.
It’s a dangerous place to put pregnant people, as the Texas family of Tierra Walker, whose story ProPublica covered, knows. When she became pregnant, Walker experienced seizures and dangerously elevated blood pressure. She asked multiple doctors as her symptoms worsened if she should have an abortion, recognizing that she was at risk of preeclampsia, a life-threatening condition. But not one of the 90 doctors she saw agreed to counsel her on abortion, or the health benefits. She died of preeclampsia, which is usually resolved by ending a pregnancy, leaving behind a teenage son.
The Center for Reproductive Rights notes that this new rule also undermines this population’s higher rates of mental and physical health conditions linked to high rates of sexual violence. Rape is also not an exception to the VA prohibition.
The rule says it intends to “ensur(e) the VA provides only medically necessary and appropriate care.” But abortion care is often “medically necessary” and for women’s agency to be respected, abortion must be treated as “appropriate care.” Veterans and their families should have access to the health care they really need.
