Americans who don’t want to be force to pay for aborting babies with their taxpayer dollars won a hard-fought victory in the halls of Congress. Republican members of Congress defeated a vote proposed by Democrat to force Americans to fund abortions done on babies in the District of Columbia.
Today the House Appropriations Committee considered the Financial Services Appropriations bill. There were two roll calls on amendments related to pro-life issues and the pro-life position prevailed in both cases.
The Financial Services Appropriations bill authored by Chairman Ander Crenshaw (R-FL) contains the D.C. Hyde (Dornan) amendment, which is a longstanding pro-life prohibition on taxpayer funding for abortion in the District of Columbia. The D.C. Hyde amendment applies to both congressionally-appropriated local funds and federal funds in the Financial Services bill.
Pro-abortion Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) offered an amendment to strike the D.C. Hyde amendment by allowing taxpayer funding for abortion in D.C. with congressionally-appropriated local funds. The Quigley amendment failed by a vote of 20-28 thanks to Republicans voting against it.
Chairman Crenshaw defended the D.C. Hyde amendment as seen in the video below:
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Meanwhile, the bill also contains funding for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) which oversees the portion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) known as the “Multi-State Plan Program” (MSPP). This program was created to be the set of plans with the greatest degree of government oversight because OPM negotiates the coverage and rates. Under the ACA, OPM is only required to ensure that one MSPP plan on each exchange excludes elective abortion.
Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) offered an amendment to prevent OPM from contracting for any abortion covering plans through the MSPP. The Harris amendment passed by a vote of 30-17.
