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WASHINGTON — Dallas Navy veteran Sydney Chipman felt a “great sense of relief” when the Department of Veterans Affairs announced plans to provide abortion services to veterans and their beneficiaries – even in Texas and other states where the procedure is now illegal.
But some Republicans are threatening legal challenges and – if the GOP regains control of Congress in the Nov. 8
Chipman argues the politicians in Congress have no business making laws limiting abortion access and care when only 27% of seats in the House and Senate are held by women.
“The laws that govern the bodies of women and children have predominantly been made by white men,” Chipman said. “Until that changes, I don’t think Congress has any place using our bodies as political pawns. This is medicine, let doctors do their jobs.”
Like many women across the country, Chipman said she felt betrayed when the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in June. The landmark Roe case originated in Dallas County.
“That’s the only way I can really characterize it,” she said. “This deep sense of betrayal by a court that had upheld Roe vs. Wade for 50 years.”
In the months that followed the monumental Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that paved the way for Republican-led states to restrict or ban the procedure outright, the Biden administration began to explore new ways in which different federal agencies could at least partially preserve abortion rights.
In many ways, the response was akin to throwing things at the wall and seeing what stuck. A series of executive orders and legal challenges from U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland ensued. With the move from Veterans Affairs in September to provide abortion services to veterans and eligible family members, the administration seems to have found some leeway.
Late last month, Secretary Denis McDonough said the VA medical system performed its first abortion under the new rule.
The decision from the VA to provide abortion services “when the life or health of the pregnant Veteran would be endangered if the pregnancy were carried to term, or when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest” is a historic first for the department, which before Dobbs did not provide veterans access to abortion counseling or abortions at all.
“I hope that it is effectively implemented in such a way that the reality of it matches the theory,” Chipman said of the new policy.
Republican backlash
Republicans in Congress denounced the VA’s decision, with Texas Rep. Jake Ellzey, R-Midlothian, calling it “cynical.”
“For those who don’t understand what’s actually happening here … this is a workaround for the federalization, using the VA as a mule, to legalize abortion, paid for by the federal government,” Ellzey said at a House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs hearing in September.
Some state attorneys general, including Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, have already said they plan to enforce their states’ respective abortion bans in spite of the new VA rule.
“I have no intention of abdicating my duty to enforce the Unborn Life Protection Act against any practitioner who unlawfully conducts abortions in the State of Alabama,” Marshall said in a statement, TIME reported.
At least fourteen states, including much of the South and parts of the Midwest, have banned most abortions outright.
“This rulemaking is yet another example of this administration using unelected bureaucracy to make law where it has no power to do so,” Ellzey said.
Texas: no exceptions for rape, incest
Texas’ abortion laws on the books notably make no exception for victims of rape or incest.
Chipman, who will graduate from the University of Texas at Arlington in December with a Master’s degree in social work, was sexually assaulted during her three-year stint in the Navy. She had an abortion afterward.
“I grew up in Texas, for the most part, and grew up in the church. I grew up around a lot of that rhetoric of ‘abortion is murder,’ like all of that stuff,” Chipman said. “So there was a rooted conflict, you know. There was a spiritual conflict, there was a psychological conflict, because it was this feeling of like, ‘I’m a bad person because this thing happened to me.’”
The hardest part, she said, was how alone she felt throughout the entire process.
“This perceived lack of support in my decision, that really was the most traumatizing about all of it,” Chipman said. “And that is the cruelty of [Senate Bill 8], there is no support.”
Senate Bill 8, Texas’ unique six-week abortion ban — once the most restrictive in the nation when it took effect Sept. 1, 2021 — deputizes private citizens to sue abortion providers or anyone else who knowingly aids or abets a procedure.
Though SB 8 has since taken a backseat to Texas’ “trigger ban” that kicked into effect two months after the Dobbs decision and made performing an abortion a felony, the 2021 law can still be used to penalize those who aid and abet in an abortion, experts say.
“They removed social supports by putting a bounty on anyone’s head who aids or abets. There is no financial support,” Chipman said. “It just further stigmatizes something that is healthcare.”
‘I’m not running’
Chipman is pursuing her master’s with a focus in mental health and substance use, and wants to work as a social worker for the VA once she graduates and takes her licensure exam.
When all this first started, she said, her impulse was to leave Texas as soon as possible.
“I originally was like, ‘Let’s get out of here,’” Chipman said. “And then at the same time, I was like, ‘Okay, but then who’s gonna fight for the change?’”
Eventually, she decided: “I’m not running.”
“I think I ran from the trauma of what happened to me for so long,” Chipman said. “I refuse to let another man tell me what to do or dictate what happens to my body. I refuse. And so I plan to stay and fight — the ‘Annie Oakley of reproductive rights,’ if you will.”
Chipman said it can be hard talking about trauma, but it helps.
“It’s why I’m still here,” she said. “And it’s why I am pursuing the career that I’m pursuing, because I want to give back to other women, other veterans. Because that help was afforded to me.”