In a closed committee mark-up Thursday, Senator Roland Burris (D-IL) successfully offered an amendment that would break with current longstanding policy and permit the performance of abortions in both domestic and overseas military facilities. Two senators broke party ranks: Ben Nelson, D-Neb., voted against it and Susan Collins, R-Maine, voted for it.
Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), who led the opposition to the amendment, decried "another piece of social engineering" and the misuse of taxpayer funds "that are there for the care of our service members to keep them healthy and to repair their injuries."
UPDATE 6/17/10: Planned Parenthood pleased with abortion push on military
UPDATE 6/7/10: Abortion amendment upsets Dem applecart
-- From "Burris amendment enables abortions at military hospitals" by Bill Lambrecht, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau 5/28/10
Fifteen years ago in a Republican-held Congress, anti-abortion forces engineered a ban on abortions at U.S. military hospitals even if they are privately funded.
Efforts in Congress to repeal that ban have failed in recent years, but an amendment sponsored by Sen. Roland Burris of Illinois to overturn the ban was added last night in a Senate committee. The repeal stands a good chance of passage.
[Lame Duck] Burris, a Democrat, observed that some 100,000 American service members and dependents live on military bases oversees.
Burris spokesman Jim O’Connor said that Burris was approached by NARAL Pro-Choice America, the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups seeking an Armed Services Committee member to sponsor the repeal.
The Senate Armed Services Committee added the abortion amendment to the $760 billion defense spending bill by a vote of 16-10 on the same evening it approved legislation paving the way for the Pentagon ending the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell ban on gays serving openly in the military.
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From "U.S. Senate Committee Oks Amendment Ditching Military Abortion Ban" by Kathleen Gilbert, LifeSiteNews.com 5/28/10
The amendment, which passed by a vote of 15-12, would strike Section 1093(b) of Title 10 of the US Code, which states: "No medical treatment facility or other facility of the Department of Defense may be used to perform an abortion except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term or in a case in which the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest." The law has been in place since 1996.
A similar amendment to allow abortions in overseas military facilities was most recently offered in the House in 2006, when it failed by a vote of 191-237. The Burris amendment is more expansive than the 2006 amendment, as it allows abortion on both domestic and overseas military bases.
The amendment will face further scrutiny by both House and Senate lawmakers before it has a chance of becoming law.
"The Burris amendment will effectively turn our military medical facilities into abortion clinics and force American taxpayers to underwrite the use of military facilities, the procurement of additional equipment, and the use of needed military personnel to perform abortions," said one Capitol Hill source.
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