WASHINGTON – The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) today commended the Trump administration and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for its proposed rule to reinstate the long-standing exclusion of abortion and abortion counseling from the VA medical benefits package.

“Today’s proposed rule reflects a return to longstanding policy and a reaffirmation of the Department’s mission to provide life-affirming, medically necessary care to our veterans and their families,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “Abortion is not health care. The Trump administration is right to restore protections that prevent the use of taxpayer dollars to end the lives of unborn children.”

The rule would overturn a 2022 interim final rule issued by the pro-abortion Biden administration. That rule created an unprecedented and unauthorized federal entitlement to abortion, despite decades of prior VA policy and legal precedent excluding abortion.

The VA’s new proposal reinstates the policy in place from 1999 to 2022, excluding abortion and abortion counseling except when the life of the mother is at risk. It affirms that care for ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages, and other life-threatening conditions will remain fully covered.

“This is a welcome correction to the overreach by the pro-abortion Biden administration that bypassed Congress and ignored the clear will of the American people,” said Tobias.

The agency’s renewed position aligns with decades of bipartisan consensus and legal clarity regarding the exclusion of abortion from taxpayer-funded health care programs.

Founded in 1968, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of affiliates in each of the 50 states, is the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots pro-life organization. National Right to Life works through legislation and education to protect innocent human life from abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide and euthanasia.