Military Abortions May Tank Troop Bill!-Tony Perkins

The President didn't end up speaking to the military yesterday, but he made his voice loud and clear in Congress the week before. Hours after the House and Senate voted to tack the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT) repeal onto the Defense Authorization bill, questions started flying about how the decision would affect our troops -- questions that the Pentagon's formal review was meant to answer. Now that Congress has torpedoed the process, even liberal reporters are wondering what changes await our soldiers. In a piece on Friday, the New York Times tried to chip away at issue after thorny issue. "Will openly gay service members be placed in separate housing, as the commandant of the Marine Corps has advocated? What benefits, if any, will par! tners or spouses of homosexual service members be accorded? Will all military units be required to treat homosexuals the same? And what re-education will heterosexual officers and enlisted troops receive to prepare them to serve with openly gay soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines?"

To 250 members of the House and Senate who presume to know better than our military, those concerns are secondary to ensuring that U.S. forces are equipped to handle the threats -- to political correctness. Now that the DADT repeal is part of the overall bill, you'd think that Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) would be racing to pass it. But according to our sources on the Hill, he seems reluctant to even bring it up. Last Thursday, Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) complicated matters for Democrats by offering language that would draft the military into the war on the unborn. By a 15-12 vote, the Senate Armed Forces Committee agreed to an amendment that would lift the ban on abortions in all military facilities. As it stands, the Department of Defense is forbidden from performing abortions -- with exceptions for rape, incest, or the health of the mother. If the Burris! language survives, some of military's biggest civilian casualties will be the unborn. Medical facilities would turn into abortion clinics funded entirely by U.S. taxpayers. When President Clinton allowed military abortions back in 1993, doctors refused to perform them. Ultimately, the administration had to hire civilians to do the job.

With Americans more pro-life than ever, it will be difficult to find men and women willing to destroy the next generation of U.S. soldiers. The military was meant to combat terrorism -- not perpetrate it against the unborn. Contact your Senators at 202-224-3121 and tell them to stop passing the President's liberal social agenda on the backs of American troops.-Family Research Council's Tony Perkins