John Kirby Defends the Military’s Support For Abortion Travel As ‘Sacred Obligation’: ‘It’s the Right Darn Thing to Do’

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby defended the Pentagon’s policy of giving service members time off and travel reimbursements to seek abortions at the White House on Monday, calling it a “sacred obligation.”

Asked to address why access to abortion is critical to the military’s function and readiness, Kirby began his reply by professing to be “really glad” to have been asked the question.

John Kirby goes on a minutes-long tirade trying to explain why abortion is necessary for military readiness. pic.twitter.com/o0ry8lHjNx

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 17, 2023

After noting that “about 20%” of service members are women, he argued that those willing to die for the country “have every right to expect that the organization, in this case the military, is gonna take care of you and they’re gonna take care of your families and they’re gonna make sure you can serve with dignity and respect.”

Kirby characterized abortion as “the kind of healthcare and reproductive specifically that they need to serve,” and even called the military’s subsidization of it “a foundational, sacred obligation.”

“It matters because it says ‘we’re invested in you cause you are being willing to invest in us.’ You’re investing your life, your family’s livelihood with us, we owe you that back in return,” he continued.

“We wanna keep the people that that we get and we want to make sure that they can continue to serve. So it can have an extremely, extremely significant impact on our recruiting and our retention, not to mention it’s just the right darn thing to do for people that raise their hand and agree to serve in the military,” concluded Kirby.

Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has been holding up around 250 senior officer promotions across various military branches in an effort to get the military to revoke the policy, which it put into place after the overturning of Roe v. Wade last year.

Tuberville has argued that “the Pentagon is circumventing the role of Congress and flouting existing federal law, which narrowly restricts the use of taxpayer funds and DoD facilities being used to provide or facilitate abortions for service members.”

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