• MasterOBee Master/King@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Under the amendments, the military will no longer pay for gender-affirming medical care for transgender troops, allow the pride flag to fly at military installations, or pay for personnel to travel for abortions if they live in a state that restricts them. None of these social issues have anything to do with Defense spending

    Although I hate these alt-right house members, I’m confused at this statement.

    They claim that the right is amending the bill so the military will no longer provide funding for the stated procedures and disallowing the pride flag, but then they say none of these issues have anything to do with defense spending. Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but it seems if the military is providing those things, it would come out of their budget?

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They’re saying, “These are social issues that the military has no business paying for.”

      They would have a point, except medical care isn’t a social issue.

        • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The Republican Party looks at this and sees them playing politics, but all it really shows is how insane they’ve gotten.

          Trans healthcare is what psychiatrists and psychologic experts prescribe. Medical professionals. It makes complete sense for the military to follow that guidance. If Republican politics take issue with that, they can go inject some ivermectin that their “medical experts” tout.

          Abortion is more contentious, I’ll give that to you, but the military has a very high incentive to ensure service members have continuous access to abortion, and it’s in every state’s best interest. Without Roe, several myopic states have banned abortion, and that creates an issue. If military service members don’t want to stay in a state like that because they’re concerned about rape and/or pregnancy complications, what’s the military to do? If they don’t honor requests to move assignments, the service members might outright quit. And right now the military is currently short on service members.

          To attract and retain talent, the military has to provide abortion access. Otherwise, they’ll lose valuable people and some states may have woefully under equipped bases. That’s a national security concern, and it also hurts the states with those bases. Eventually, they may have to outright abandon facilities in anti abortion states because it’s a net detriment. I’m not entirely sure the states in question can take that economic hit.

          Republicans have chosen positions that are extremely unpopular and picked wedge issues that go against medical science. They’re now reaping the consequences of that. The plurality of the country blamed Republicans for the debt ceiling crisis. Somehow, I don’t think they’re going to change their minds when Republicans do the exact same thing with the budget and govt funding.