Americans have a better idea about Joe Biden’s abortion agenda after the Democratic presidential candidate unveiled his plans for national health care on Monday.
ABC News reports the former vice president’s plan would expand the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, by forcing American taxpayers to pay for abortions, among other things.
The plan would allow more people to opt to receive insurance through Medicare, though it would allow people who like their employer’s health plan to stay with that option, the report states. It also would increase tax credits and subsidies for health care plans on the Obamacare exchanges.
“We should not be starting from scratch. We should be building from what we have. There is no time to wait. And I that’s why I think, what I’m proposing — and we can do it — is to keep Obamacare, restore the cuts that have been made, and add a public option,” Biden said Friday in New Hampshire.
Though Biden once was more moderate on abortion, supporting restrictions on taxpayer-funded abortions and other measures, more recently, he has embraced his party’s extreme platform on abortion. In June, he announced that he no longer supports the Hyde amendment, which restricts taxpayer-funded abortions.
Biden’s new health care plan would expand abortions in multiple ways. If elected president, he would codify Roe v. Wade into federal law, prohibiting states from passing even moderate restrictions that protect unborn babies from late-term abortions, according to the report.
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The public option would cover women’s contraception and abortion, Biden officials said. Obamacare currently covers contraception at no cost. Abortion services are currently excluded from the 10 essential health benefits that insurers must cover. Insurers may offer coverage of abortions as long as they comply with the requirement to segregate federal funds.
His plan would change that, forcing insurers to cover abortion as “essential” health care. In doing so, he would end the Hyde amendment and force taxpayers to fund abortions for any reason up to birth.
His plan also would restore the funding that President Donald Trump cut from the largest abortion chain in America, Planned Parenthood, according to reports. This would include ending the Mexico City policy, which prohibits foreign aid funding to groups that promote and provide abortions overseas. Under Trump, the policy cut about $100 million from the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s budget.
The Washington Post reports Biden’s plan would cost approximately $750 billion over 10 years and cover an estimated 97 percent of Americans.
Though Democratic leaders are embracing an increasingly extreme position on abortion, most Americans are not. A new Gallup poll found that 60 percent of Americans want abortion legal “only in a few circumstances” (39 percent) or “illegal in all circumstances” (21 percent). That number jumped 7 percent from 2018.
A January poll by Marist University found an overwhelming majority of Americans support restrictions on abortion. It found that three-quarters (75 percent) of Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion abroad, while just 19 percent support such funding. Opposition to this funding includes most Republicans (94 percent) and independents (80 percent) and a majority of Democrats (56 percent).
By a double-digit margin, a majority of all Americans oppose any taxpayer funding of abortion (54 percent to 39 percent).
Biden 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. What’s more, pro-abortion movement leaders say they “trust” Biden to protect abortion on demand. 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.
To show how extreme Biden has become, he once likened an abortion to an operation — as if taking the life of a baby before birth is somehow beneficial in the same manner as a patient’s operation.
Biden said: “Maybe where Romney is most sketchy is on women’s rights. I got a daughter and lost a daughter. I’ve got four granddaughters and Barack has two daughters. And this is to our core. Our daughters and our granddaughters are entitled to every single solitary operation, every single solitary opportunity!”
