Because Americans have a constitutional right to the free exercise of religion, the government is obliged to provide military personnel with chaplains at public expense. Americans also have a constitutional right to abortion. So the government also should be obliged to provide pregnant military personnel with access to abortion services, no?

No. As Elisabeth Bumiller reports in today’s New York Times:

Current law bans abortions in most cases at military facilities, even if
women pay themselves, meaning they must go outside to private hospitals
and clinics — an impossibility for many of the estimated 100,000
American servicewomen in foreign countries, particularly in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

A provision of the pending Pentagon policy bill (the same one that does away with Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell) would permit pregnant service women to use their own funds to obtain abortions at military facilities–as was the case during the early years of the Clinton presidency. This is one of those abortion footballs that’s been kicked back and forth over the years, depending on which party has the whip hand in Congress.

Given the importance to the Obama Administration of DADT and the demonstrated strength of anti-abortion forces in Washington these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if the provision disappears from the bill. But as a matter of constitutional principle, it’s not clear to me why sauce for the religious goose shouldn’t be sauce for the abortion gander.