Ash Wallis knows she likely wouldn’t survive another pregnancy. Doctors said as much years earlier after she suffered a pulmonary embolism following a miscarriage, and got a second blood clot. Getting pregnant again isn’t a risk she is willing or able to take.

“I have two sons,” said Wallis. “I don’t want to leave them motherless.”

Wallis, 40, begged her health care provider to give her an IUD — her best chance at preventing another pregnancy and protecting her life. But her provider, the Department of Veterans Affairs, refused to cover the procedure. Despite three years of service in the Army, Wallis was forced to pay out of pocket at a local clinic.

“The risks of me getting pregnant and there being a significant health issue were too much risk for me to gamble on,” she said.

Access to reproductive care and abortion has long been a problem for those who rely on VA care. But a policy change by the Trump administration stands to make reproductive health for service members and veterans even worse. Last week, the administration posted a proposed rule for VA facilities that would severely narrow access to abortion — eliminating exceptions for health, rape, and incest, and only allowing the procedure in situations deemed to threaten the life of the mother. The rule would also ban any counseling for abortion through the VA. The proposed policy now enters a mandatory 30-day comment period, after which it can go into effect.

Experts told The Intercept that the rule change will have devastating consequences for the millions of service members and veterans reliant on health care through the VA, as well as their families.

“It’s the worst-case scenario,” said Rachel Fey, vice president of policy and strategic partnerships at Power to Decide, a nonprofit focused on reproductive and sexual health.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has long excluded abortion care and abortion counseling from its medical benefits package, with a narrow exception for the “life of the mother.” That changed in 2022 when the Biden administration, recognizing the danger posed to veterans and service members by the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, instituted a new rule allowing for abortion counseling and abortion care in an expanded list of circumstances.

It’s this Biden-era change that is under attack by the Trump administration. The administration describes the proposed policy shift as a return to form.

“Prior to the Biden Administration’s politically motivated change in 2022,........

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