Over and over again, through polls, elections, protests and grassroots efforts, Americans have made it clear that they do not want their tax dollars to pay for abortions.
Now, as reports surface about Democrat leaders surreptitiously slipping funding for the abortion industry into a COVID-19 relief bill, pro-life advocates are fighting back.
National Catholic Register writer Lauretta Brown highlighted their efforts in a new report.
“A hijacking is underway of very benign and important funding that then gets diverted to killing babies,” U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., told Brown. “… They’re going to do everything they can to do it all, to subsidize abortions in the United States, in all of our programs, every program and in foreign aid.”
President Joe Biden and leading Democrat lawmakers have been open about their plans to end the Hyde Amendment and force taxpayers to fund abortions, and Smith, a leading pro-life advocate in Congress, said the coronavirus relief package is one of their methods.
“The likelihood is that the appropriations bills and the $1.9-trillion COVID relief package will be paying for abortion, but also allowing governors to give money to Planned Parenthood and other abortionists with no strings attached,” he told Brown.
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The decades-old Hyde Amendment prohibits taxpayer funding for elective abortions in Medicaid and other federal programs. Until very recently, it had strong bipartisan support in Congress, including from Biden and other Democrat leaders, and it still has strong support from most Americans.
In 1994, Biden said people “who are opposed to abortions should not be compelled to pay for them,” the Register noted. But on the campaign trail in 2019, Biden changed his position, arguing that the prohibition on taxpayer-funded abortions leaves “millions of women without access to the care they need and their ability to exercise their constitutionally protected right.”
The Hyde Amendment has saved about 2.4 million unborn babies from abortion, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute.
And polls consistently show most Americans want it to remain in place. A January Marist poll found 58 percent of Americans oppose using tax dollars to fund abortions in the U.S. Additionally, 77 percent oppose using tax dollars to fund abortions in other countries.
Significantly, a 2016 Harvard/Politico poll 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 more likely to oppose it.
Smith, other Republican lawmakers and at least one Democrat are fighting for the vast majority of Americans on the matter.
In January, approximately 200 Republicans in the U.S. House signaled their “unified opposition to congressional Democrats’ efforts to repeal the Hyde Amendment” in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“No president in American history has ever vetoed an appropriations bill due to its inclusion of the Hyde Amendment,” including President Barack Obama, they wrote.
A separate letter from 48 U.S. Senate Republicans made a similar promise to “vote against the advancement of any legislation that would eliminate or weaken the Hyde Amendment or any other current-law pro-life protections, or otherwise undermine existing federal pro-life policy.”
U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, also recently said he will continue to support the Hyde Amendment and represent the views of most Americans on the issue.
Smith wondered why Democrat lawmakers have abandoned their popular position on the issue, and he slammed Biden’s flip-flop as “unconscionable.”
“There are no pro-life Democrats anymore in the House,” Smith said. “When I got elected, there were about 80 pro-life Democrats. … They have just been completely primaried out or defeated in one way or the other.”
The Democratic Party’s close ties to the billion-dollar abortion industry is likely the reason. Abortion advocacy groups donate tens of millions of dollars to Democrats’ election campaigns.
