Abortion Access: Op-ed & Outreach to Congress and the Biden Admin
We’re excited to update you about what we recently did to urge Congress and the Administration to expand abortion access for federal employees.
Almost every year since 1983, Congress has included a rider in the federal budget prohibiting us from choosing a private health plan that includes abortion coverage. Abortion is the only form of healthcare that Congress cuts out of our insurance, and that’s outrageous; politicians have no business deciding what specific healthcare services are available to civil servants. Being the rare large employer that doesn’t cover abortion means that feds must pay for it out of pocket, which imposes a significant financial burden on us and may place abortion care out of reach for many, especially the thousands of feds who live near the federal poverty level.
This is what DOJ GEN has done so far to raise hell:
We wrote an op-ed that The Hill published on November 5. This is DOJ GEN’s first op-ed!
On November 22, we sent a letter to members of Congress asking that they leave the abortion coverage ban out of the Fiscal Year 2023. We received positive responses from several members. Press reports indicate that Congress is close to finalizing next year’s budget and we’re not sure yet whether the ban will be in it, but we’re not holding our breath. Either way, this is a decision that Congress and the White House face every year, so we’ll continue our advocacy.
On December 7, we sent a letter urging President Biden to drop the federal employee abortion coverage ban from his Fiscal Year 2024 proposed budget. We also reiterated our May and August requests to protect feds’ abortion access by (1) providing admin leave and covering travel expenses for those who must travel out of state for care; (2) allowing feds to opt out of travel or relocation to states that ban abortion; (3) prohibiting the consideration of abortion-related activity during background investigations; and (4) including employee advocates in their response.
We want to thank Jen Swedish a hundred times for her incredible work on all of this, and also the Abortion Access Working Group’s kick-ass Hyde Subcommittee. We’ll let you know what we learn about next year’s budget and whether we receive further responses to our letters.