Tuberville Still Fighting For Life After Taking On Abortion Subsidies

When Tommy Tuberville stood up for life against the military abortion complex, he stood virtually alone. 

Abortion-loving Democrats, of course, derided the Alabama senator for imposing a blanket hold on military confirmations and promotions — as was his right to do —  in fighting back against the Biden administration’s policy subsidizing abortions in the U.S. military. In defiance of the long-standing Hyde Amendment, the Department of Defense covered travel and other costs of members of the military and their dependents who chose to cross state lines to murder the unborn. It was a naked political move by the Biden administration following the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling overturning Roe v. Wade and returning abortion policy back to the states. 

Tuberville’s fellow Republicans, many of whom promote themselves as pro-life stalwarts, lashed out at the senator, too. Washington, D.C., can be a very lonely place for the principled. 

“Why are we putting holds on war heroes?” demanded Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, a retired colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, during the contentious session. “I don’t understand.” As the Associated Press reported, Sullivan huffed that Tuberville’s stand would be remembered as a “national security suicide mission,” apparently forgetting about the actual national security suicide mission the Biden administration was leading on a daily basis. 

Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., who seems to have never met a war he hasn’t wanted U.S taxpayers to fund or some young service member to die in, scolded Tuberville for not just suing the Pentagon, because, “That’s how you handle these things.” After the Alabama senator declared his objection to calling a vote on a two-star general nominated to serve as an Air Force deputy commander, Graham disgustedly told Tuberville, “You just denied that lady a promotion.”

Despite the pressure from many in his own party, the legendary college football coach known for his fortitude (aka cajones) stood his ground for 11 long months. He backed down only after abortion-on-demand Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Senate majority leader at the time, threatened to go around Tuberville and change the rules on Senate nominee holds. But Tuberville never stopped fighting against the Pentagon’s policy and standing up for the unborn and taxpayers. 

“Remarkably, Senator Tuberville held off the entire military-industrial complex and the Senate establishment …,” the Family Research Council said in a press release. 

Sen. Mike Lee, one of Tuberville’s most vocal defenders during the nomination battle, called his colleague a hero.  

“Senator Tuberville fought courageously for unborn Americans and the rule of law. His opponents threatened to forever destroy Senate procedure to get their way, and today he is acting to protect our institution from them,” the Utah Republican senator wrote on X after Tuberville announced he would lift his blockade. 

‘Just Hypocrites’

It took an election, a new commander-in-chief, and the Defense secretary that some Republicans trashed as too divisive and inexperienced to end Biden’s abortion subsidy. On Jan. 30., the DOD reversed the directive that had been in place since right before the 2022 midterm elections. The action followed Trump’s executive order on “Enforcing the Hyde Amendment”, which ordered federal agencies to “end the use of federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion.”  

The order recognizes that for nearly a half century the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal tax dollars to pay for abortion, has been the law of the land. “Contrary to this longstanding commonsense policy, the previous administration embedded federal funding of elective abortion in a wide variety of government programs,” Trump’s order states. President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice had argued that the Hyde Amendment “does not prohibit the use of funds to pay expenses, such as a per diem or travel expenses, that are incidental to the abortion.”  

Tuberville, chairman of Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, lauded President Trump and Secretary Pete Hegseth for putting an end to the Biden administration policy, and the Democrats treating taxpayer dollars “like their own personal piggy bank” to “bankroll their woke agenda.” 

On a recent episode of “The Federalist Radio Hour,” the Alabama Republican said he felt gratified by the Pentagon’s memo. But he said he’ll never forget how brutal the battle was, the times he stood on the Senate floor in the wee hours of the morning fighting against “pro-life” Republicans. Interestingly, many of those same Republicans were among the first to applaud the president and Hegseth for scrapping the Biden abortion travel stipend. 

“It was funny. I watched the president do this executive order and of course all of those same Republicans were just clapping and yelling that that was the right thing to do,” Tuberville says on the podcast. “Just hypocrites.” 

From Executive Order to Law

Tuberville said it’s time to make Trump’s executive order law so that the next pro-abortion president can’t simply reverse executive branch policy, Hyde Amendment not withstanding. 

The Republican-controlled House last year, basically on party lines, passed a version of the National Defense Authorization Act that included an amendment barring the Pentagon from paying for or reimbursing abortion-related expenses. 

“Biden’s Department of Defense is using taxpayer dollars to fund time off, lodging and travel expenses for elective abortions, directly violating the long-standing Hyde Amendment in yet another attempt to promote abortion,” Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas., who spearheaded the amendment to the defense bill, said in a press release.

A version of the NDAA without the prohibition ultimately made it through the Democrat-controlled Senate and Biden signed the nearly $900 billion spending bill in late December. The law does restrict funding for transgender treatments and other medical mutilation of children of service members, a prohibition Biden and fellow Democrats lamented. 

As of March 2024, the only time the Biden Pentagon had provided data on the abortion travel expense policy, “it had been used 12 times” and cost taxpayers $44,791, the Military Times reported. The Federalist has requested updated information from the Department of Defense. 

Swamp Fights Back

Interestingly, while the Biden administration couldn’t bring itself to provide updates on its skirting of abortion restrictions in the federal government, it reportedly had time to sic the Internal Revenue Service on Hegseth. The Defense secretary on Monday claimed on X that the IRS hit him with an audit as a Biden administration parting gift. 

“Of course the outgoing Biden IRS rushed an ‘audit’ of the incoming SecDef. Total sham,” Hegseth wrote. The post includes a photo of an IRS letter addressed to Hegseth and his wife stating the couple owes the federal government $33,558.16. The IRS demands it be paid immediately to avoid further penalties

“The party of ‘norms’ and ‘decency’ strikes again,” Hegseth wrote, noting what appears to be another incident of the left’s weaponizing of the government to target its political enemies. “We will never back down.”

Tuberville knows the feeling from his fight for life against the military industrial complex. The son of a World War II veteran and a vehement supporter of U.S. service members, the senator said he was vilified for sticking to his principles. As Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said amid the bruising Senate battles over Biden military nominees, “When Mr. Smith goes to Washington, Washington always fights back.” Roberts said Tuberville “refused to abandon unborn children in favor of unelected bureaucrats.” 

The more things change the more they stay the same in the swamp. Tuberville compared his battles to stop government subsidizing of abortion to Trump’s efforts to expose and excise waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal bureaucracy. Now that the Trump administration is threatening thousands of unelected bureaucrat jobs in the swamp, the administrative state is going to war with the administration. 

Trump, too, has taken on the DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) complex that has infected the U.S. government. 

In a press release following the DOD’s reversal of the Biden-era abortion assistance policy, Tuberville said he’s encouraged by the Trump administration quickly addressing “the poisonous, woke ideology that has permeated every part of our government, including the military.”

“I’m proud of the small role I played in protecting taxpayers and standing up for life,” the senator said. “Trump and I have something in common: promises made, promises kept.”

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.