Several top Democratic presidential hopefuls confirmed their support for taxpayer-funded abortions Wednesday after fellow candidate Joe Biden said he supports restrictions.
Earlier this week, the former vice president said he supports the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer-funded elective abortions in Medicaid. The amendment has had strong bipartisan support for years, and continues to have strong support from voters.
But many of the other Democratic presidential candidates said Wednesday that they do not share Biden’s views, The Hill reports. They want abortions to be taxpayer-funded without restriction.
Among them are U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker, as well as Beto O’Rourke, Gov. Jay Inslee, Julian Castro, U.S. Reps. Eric Swalwell and Tim Ryan, the report states.
“There is #NoMiddleGround on women’s rights. Abortion is a constitutional right. Under my Medicare for All plan, we will repeal the Hyde Amendment,” Sanders wrote on Twitter.
Harris also supported taxpayer-funded abortions in a post on social media: “No woman’s access to reproductive health care should be based on how much money she has. We must repeal the Hyde Amendment.”
When reporters asked Warren about the Hyde Amendment this week, she said pretty much the same thing. She promised to “lead the fight” to force taxpayers to fund abortions, if elected, according to the report.
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Gillibrand posed the issue as a matter of income inequality, saying, “Repealing the Hyde Amendment is critical so that low-income women in particular can have access to the reproductive care [abortions] they need and deserve.”
Their position is in line with the billion-dollar abortion industry and the Democratic Party platform, which now supports forcing taxpayers to fund abortions.
But most Americans do not share these candidates’ views. Polls consistently show strong opposition to taxpayer-funded abortions.
In 2016, when Hillary Clinton campaigned on the same issue, a Harvard University poll found that only 36 percent of likely voters support overturning the Hyde Amendment.
Interestingly, the poll also found that voters who make more than $75,000 were more supportive of forcing taxpayers to fund abortions (45 percent in favor), while those who make $25,000 or less were strongly against it (24 percent in favor). In other words, the people most likely to qualify for a Medicaid-covered, taxpayer-funded abortion are the ones who oppose it the most.
A January poll by Marist University found similarly strong opposition, with 75 percent saying they oppose taxpayer-funded abortions and 19 percent support it.
This week, Biden said he supports the Hyde Amendment, but earlier a video showed him telling an ACLU representative that he opposes it. His campaign said Biden misunderstood the representative’s question.
Biden may be with voters on this issue, but he is still an ardent abortion supporter.
He has a strong pro-abortion voting record that goes back for many years, and he supported President Barack Obama’s leadership as the most pro-abortion president in U.S. history. As the vice president, he supported the administration’s pro-abortion policies, including Obamacare, which forced religious employers to pay for drugs that may cause abortions.
From 2001 to 2008, Biden’s voting record on pro-life issues was close to zero, according to the National Right to Life Committee. In 2005, for example, he voted against the Mexico City Policy, which prohibits funding to overseas groups that promote and/or perform abortions. He also voted repeatedly to require that military service members’ abortions be covered by taxpayer dollars.
