Pentagon claim that Abortion ruling would impact readiness looks bogus

 Fox News:

Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee are requesting information from the Pentagon regarding a new memo that alleges the Supreme Court's recent abortion decision will impact the "readiness" of the military force, which the lawmakers argue does not provide sufficient supporting evidence.

The Supreme Court recently overturned the 1973 landmark ruling Roe v. Wade in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, returning the issue of abortion to the states. Following the Dobbs decision, the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Gilbert R. Cisneros Jr. released a memo on June 28 stating that the court's decision has "significant implications" for service members and the overall "readiness of the Force."

Current law prohibits DOD from paying for service members' abortions unless the life of the mother is endangered and in other more rare circumstances, including incest and rape. Therefore, the Pentagon acknowledges in the memo that there would be no impact on the existing prohibitions under federal law.

The memo also states that the Dobbs decision would have no impact on already existing leave policies, which currently authorize DOD employees to travel to receive abortion services, and sick leave may continue to be used to cover time off needed to receive such procedures.
...

The senators write that there is "no evidence presented in this memo to support the conclusion that the Dobbs decision will have ‘significant implications’ for the ‘readiness of the Force.’" They ask Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to detail what the "significant implications" are and what data were used to support that conclusion.
...

The memo looks more like a political document than a realistic assessment of the impact of the decision.  It  looks like it is a pander to Democrats who oppose the Dobbs decision. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more