Sen. Tommy Tuberville's block more than 300 U.S. military appointments over the Pentagon's abortion policy is upending military families' lives, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday.
Tuberville, a social conservative from Alabama, began blocking confirmations to senior Pentagon posts in March to protest a Defense Department policy enacted last year that provides paid leave and reimburses costs for service members who travel to get an abortion.
Democrats are now urging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to force Tuberville to change his mind.
"They think I am going to break; I will not break," Tuberville told Wednesday's "John Bachman Now" on Newsmax, adding, McConnell is "not going to tell me what to do; he understands the situation."
The senator also stated there should be no legislating from the Pentagon, as "they don't make the laws; we do in this building."
The only way a policy can be changed is to vote on it in Congress, Tuberville said, saying he would then accept the result, no matter which way Congress voted.
Kirby said Tuberville's actions have put relocations on hold and forced families to disenroll children from schools ahead of the fall, while forcing senior officers to delay "well-earned" retirements.
Some senior officers will likely start "voting with their feet," Kirby said, as the holds continue and they decide they can no longer delay retirement.
Tuberville rejected the claim his stance is a national security threat, pointing out the 250 promotions being held up is out of 2 million people who are in the U.S. military.
"I'll tell you about a national security threat: We have a Space Command that is very new; we had a place for Space Command [headquarters] to go, which was in my state in Huntsville, Alabama," Tuberville said. "They put that on hold for three years now, and China is running away from us in space, and we don't have a place for Space Command.
"But they're telling me that 250 promotions is causing a readiness problem?"
"They are the ones that are ruining our military," he concluded, "because they are putting politics in it."
Abortion restrictions in Alabama and a number of other states have grown since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year, ending nearly 50 years of federal abortion protections.
Kirby said military members do not get to decide where they get stationed, including in states with restrictive abortion laws.
"That's why I call them orders. You go where you're told to go, you go where the duty demands," Kirby said.
Kirby said a woman service member living in a state with restrictive abortion laws has every right to expect that when they sign up for the military they will have access to the reproductive care they need.
Newsmax writer Eric Mack contributed to this report.
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