The Department of Veterans Affairs teaches its so-called health care providers to encourage abortions, instructs that men can get pregnant, and recommends against congratulating a pregnant woman, a leaked training video initially obtained by the Post Millennial revealed. The federally funded training further portrays abortion as beneficial for expectant mothers, and childbirth as more dangerous than having an abortion, while perpetuating the myth that abortion restrictions represent a “long history of reproductive injustice in this country.”
The video outlines preferred terminology, much of it sourced from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, that clearly glorifies abortion and erases women. The offensive framing instructs that instead of “pregnant woman,” the approved term is “person who is pregnant.” Instead of “baby” or “unborn child,” medical providers are supposed to say “fetus” or “embryo.” “Mother” is replaced by “person.”
The video openly admits that the most common reasons women give for seeking abortions aren’t life-threatening circumstances, as the abortion boosters in the media pretend, but reasons of convenience. At the top of the list, 40 percent of women who sought abortions cited “not [being] financially prepared” and 36 percent said it was “not the right time for a baby.” Twenty percent of women said they chose abortion to ensure their babies didn’t “interfere[] with future opportunities.”
Case studies featured in the training, like one about a woman named Jada who was seeking an abortion, are presented in language designed to scare women away from keeping their babies. Jada wanted an abortion because she wanted to “feel in control” instead of having her dreams “squashed,” the training materials state. The dream in question: she wanted to sell jewelry online. “Now she can’t see that ever happening.” The video later claims that “abortion restrictions can substantially curtail life prospects.”
As more than half the states in the nation have outlawed or restricted abortions following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision last year, the Biden administration is using the military to try to circumvent state laws and perform abortions in those states anyway or pay for military personnel to travel out of state. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby went so far as to claim the federal government has a “sacred obligation” to spend taxpayers’ dollars on service members’ abortions.
The VA training video decries the inconvenience of not just being pregnant with a baby but having to travel out of state to kill it, bemoaning the “emotional impact of traveling for an abortion.” The negatives of traveling to kill your unborn child, according to the VA, include “financial stress,” “logistics and arrangements,” and potentially “arriving only to learn [you are] past the gestational limit.” On the bright side, the VA notes, if you travel out of state to kill your baby, you’ll have the “opportunity to see a new place!”
One of the most sinister parts of the video is “Belinda’s chart of pros and cons,” listing the different options that VA providers are supposed to explain to pregnant women. The “pros” of having an abortion include that Belinda could “keep working on [her] mental health and sobriety,” as well as “continue school.” The “cons” are that she would “feel sad and guilty,” and — in a remarkable tell — that she “want[s] to take care of a baby.”
The “cons” of choosing to become a parent include the fear that she would have to quit school, issues with sobriety, and that her “PTSD would get way worse.” Belinda’s admitted “pro” of choosing parenting is that “maybe this will give [her] purpose in life.” Notably excluded from the list is the ultimate “pro” — the reality that, if Belinda chooses to keep her baby, the baby gets to live.
The VA’s pro-abortion propaganda is part of the Biden administration’s ongoing push to use the military to further Democrats’ radical abortion agenda, as Marjorie Dannenfelser, the President of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, notes.
“Americans will be shocked to learn that, not only is the VA performing abortions at hospitals across the county, but they are promoting and training their staff with radical pro-abortion ideology, counseling women veterans into having abortions,” she said in a statement. “Most Americans don’t want their taxpayer dollars funding abortions, especially in direct violation of the law.”
“The video is an insult to women everywhere,” added Brian Burch, the president of CatholicVote, “not only because it utterly denies biology in claiming men can get pregnant, but also because it adds insult to injury in claiming pregnancy is nothing to be celebrated or congratulated.”