Attorney General Bonta Continues Fighting Trump Administration’s Near-Total Ban on Abortion Care for Veterans

OAKLAND - California Attorney General Rob Bonta joined a coalition of 23 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in support of plaintiffs challenging the Trump Administration's new federal rule that would eliminate veterans' and their families' access to abortion care. In the brief, the coalition argues that a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) rule would deny abortion care to 90% of previously eligible patients, jeopardizes the health and wellbeing of veterans and their families, creates dangerous confusion for healthcare providers, and shifts burdensome healthcare costs onto states.

"The Trump Administration is once again breaking a fundamental promise to our veterans by restricting access to healthcare and knowingly exposing those who have sacrificed so much for our country to preventable harms," said Attorney General Bonta. "By dismantling commonsense public health protections and blocking access to critical abortion care, the Administration is putting its political agenda above the health and well-being of those who have served. I urge the court to hold this rule unlawful."

In December 2025, the VA finalized a rule reversing protections established under the Biden Administration in 2022 that permitted abortion care for veterans and their survivors and dependents in cases of self-reported rape or incest, or when a pregnancy threatened a patient's health, as well as abortion counseling in all cases. The reversal disproportionately harms women veterans, who face elevated risks of pregnancy complications, military sexual trauma, and financial barriers to care. In the first year of the 2022 rule, 73% of patients who received abortion care through the VA experienced pregnancies that threatened their health, 17% were survivors of rape, and 10% faced life-threatening pregnancies, demonstrating its necessity. Despite concerns raised by Attorney General Bonta and the coalition directly with the VA and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), as well as a September 2025 comment letter detailing the rule's harmful consequences, the VA finalized the rule without changes. In response to the VA's decision to roll back these protections, California recently enacted AB 2531 (Irwin, 2026) which allows Medi-Cal providers to apply for grants to offer abortion and contraceptive care, at no cost, to uninsured veterans or veterans who do not have health coverage that includes abortion and contraception.

In the amicus brief, filed in Minority Veterans of America v. Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Attorney General Bonta and the coalition argue that the reversal:

• Threatens veterans' health and financial security: Restricting medically necessary abortion care is particularly dangerous for veterans, who face heightened pregnancy risks like pre-eclampsia, hypertension, and gestational diabetes. With 43% of reproductive-age American women lacking the savings to cover the median $563 cost of a medication abortion, obtaining care elsewhere may be financially out of reach.
• Creates dangerous confusion for healthcare providers: Although the new rule expressly permits life-saving abortions for certain dependents and survivors covered under Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Department of Veterans Affairs, it fails to establish the same explicit exception for veterans themselves. The uncertainty created by the lack of explicit language allowing life-saving abortions may cause providers to delay emergency treatment out of fear of legal or professional consequences, including loss of licensure or even jail time, in a post-Dobbs world, as sadly evidenced by the at least seven documented deaths due to interference with providers' ability to provide emergency care.
• Diverges from state and federal healthcare standards: The new rule is more restrictive than most state abortion bans and departs from federal emergency healthcare standards, including the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act or EMTALA, which requires covered hospitals to stabilize qualifying emergency medical conditions that could reasonably be expected to seriously jeopardize a pregnant patient's health.
• Eliminates abortion counseling undermining informed consent and patient autonomy: By restricting providers' ability to discuss abortion as a medical option, the rule deprives veterans and their families of information necessary to make informed healthcare decisions and undermines trust between patients and providers.
• Places additional strain on states who must fulfill the VA's broken promise: By denying veterans access to medically necessary abortion care through the VA, the rule shifts healthcare costs onto states' already strained Medicaid programs and reproductive healthcare safety nets.

In filing the amicus brief, Attorney General Bonta joins the attorneys general of Massachusetts, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawai'i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.