An abortion business in New Mexico has chosen to use Armed Forces Day to target active-duty military women for abortions.
The Women’s Reproductive Clinic in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, announced it would give the abortion pill to any active duty, enlisted military member from Monday, May 13 through Saturday, May 18 free of charge as part of Armed Forces Day, which falls on May 18 this year. The military women will still have to pay for their abortion-related travel expenses.
The abortion business is owned by Dr. Franz Theard, a former Army doctor, who was under investigation in 2020 by the New Mexico Medical Board for a botched abortion in which the woman “unexpectedly delivered remains of her deceased baby at home.” When the woman and her husband called the facility, Theard fled.
This isn’t the first time that Women’s Reproductive Clinic has given away the abortion pill. It did so for International Women’s Day in 2022 and in January 2020 for the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. In 2022, Theard offered all abortion procedures for free to military members. In just two months, he said he committed abortions on nine babies of military women.
According to the pro-abortion group Ibis Reproductive Health, the rate of unplanned pregnancy in the military is nearly twice as high as among civilians. There are about 72 unplanned pregnancies per 1,000 women of reproductive age in the military vs. 45 unplanned pregnancies per 1,000 civilian women.
READ: The problem with military abortions isn’t the cost. It’s the lives lost.
There is immense pressure for women on active duty to have abortions if they become pregnant. Bethany Saros became pregnant while she was stationed in Iraq and she said in an essay for Salon that she knew she would have to choose her career or her baby.
“One of the stigmas attached to a female getting pregnant on a deployment is the assumption that she did it on purpose,” Saros wrote. “It’s whispered about any time the word ‘pregnancy’ comes up right before or during a combat tour. The unspoken code is that a good soldier will have an abortion, continue the mission, and get some sympathy because she chose duty over motherhood. But for the woman who chooses motherhood over duty, well, she must have been trying to get out of deployment.”
When her military boyfriend dumped her after she told him she was pregnant, she knew she couldn’t go through with an abortion. So with the blessing of her commanding sergeant major, she left the Army, and all of her efforts to succeed in her military career were lost — not because of a lack of access to abortion, but because of the total lack of support for mothers in the military.
By offering the abortion pill for free to active members of the military, The Women’s Reproductive Clinic has increased the pressure pregnant women already feel to have an abortion they may not want.
