Democrat congressional leaders put pressure on President Joe Biden this week to force Americans to fund the killing of unborn babies in abortions by eliminating the Hyde Amendment.
Taxpayer-funded abortions are a new goal of the abortion industry and its allies in Congress. Biden once opposed taxpayer-funded abortions, as most Americans do, but he abandoned his position on the campaign trail in 2019.
In a letter Tuesday, leaders of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus and the Democratic Women’s Caucus urged Biden to keep his campaign promise and eliminate limits on taxpayer-funded abortions in the 2022 budget, The Hill reports. Seven Democrats in the U.S. Senate also signed the letter.
They told Biden to “send a strong message to Congress, the country, and the world that everyone should be able to decide when and how to start a family— regardless of how much money they make, the type of insurance they have, or where they live.”
To do so, they asked the president to get rid of the Hyde Amendment and Helms Amendment, which restrict taxpayer funding for abortions in programs like Medicaid and foreign assistance, as well as the Weldon Amendment, which prohibits the government from discriminating against health care providers that oppose abortions, according to the report.
“The pandemic yet again showed the long-standing structural racism and inequities in our health care system, with communities of color, particularly those in the Black, Latinx, and Pacific Islander communities, and Indigenous people facing high rates of infection and death from COVID-19,” they wrote. “We are ready to work with the Biden Administration to undo harmful abortion access policies that have only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
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Lawmakers who signed the letter included Pro-Choice Caucus chairwomen Barbara Lee, of California, and Diana DeGette, of Colorado, Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, of Connecticut, and Sens. Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut, Patty Murray, of Washington, Tammy Duckworth, of Illinois, Mazie Hirono, of Hawaii, Dianne Feinstein, of California, Jeanne Shaheen, of New Hampshire and Maggie Hassan, of New Hampshire.
The Hyde Amendment, which has been in place since 1976, prohibits taxpayer funding for most abortions in Medicaid and other federal programs. It has saved an estimated 2.4 million babies from abortions, including about 60,000 each year, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute.
For decades, the Hyde Amendment had strong bipartisan support, and polls consistently show that most Americans still support it. But Democrat leaders – who have close ties to the billion-dollar abortion industry – now want to force taxpayers to pay for abortions.
They are trying to portray the Hyde Amendment as discriminatory. Their argument is based on the idea that women need to be able to abort their unborn babies to succeed, and poor women, many of them African American and Hispanic, may not be able to afford abortions on their own.
Ironically, however, research by pro-abortion groups contradict this point. Statistics show that while African Americans make up 13 percent of the population, they have 36 percent of all abortions. According to the Guttmacher Institute, the abortion rate among African American women is almost five times higher than it is among white women.
Meanwhile, resistance from Republicans and Democrats is growing.
In an op-ed at The Hill last week, Democrats for Life of America leaders Terrisa Bukovinac and Xavier Bisits called out their party leaders for quietly including taxpayer-funded abortions in a COVID-19 relief bill.
“As Democrats and liberals, we are appalled that members of our party are using a bill as important as this one to repeal a compromise that 6 in 10 American women support,” they wrote. “Introducing such a divisive policy is a poor platform for building national unity.”
They pointed to polls that consistently show most Americans do not want their tax dollars to pay for the killing of unborn babies in abortions, including many Democrat voters. These include recent polls from Marist and Harvard University/Politico. According to Marist, six in 10 Americans (60 percent) oppose taxpayer funding of abortion, while the Harvard poll found that 58 percent oppose it.
What’s more, research suggests low-income women do not want taxpayer-funded abortions. According to the Harvard/Politico poll, voters who make more than $75,000 were more supportive of ending the Hyde Amendment (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.
Democrat leaders also are seeing resistance from some of their own party members. Earlier this year, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, a pro-life Democrat from West Virginia, said that he will continue to support the Hyde Amendment.
Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House and Senate also have sent letters to Democrat leaders in recent weeks vowing to oppose legislation that forces taxpayers to fund abortions.
Research by Charlotte Lozier Institute associate scholar Dr. Michael New estimates the Hyde Amendment has saved about 2.4 million babies from abortions. Prior to the amendment, in the 1970s, Americans paid for about 300,000 unborn babies’ abortion deaths each year, according to a report from the Family Research Council.
If Democrats end the Hyde Amendment, Americans could be forced to pay for 60,000 elective abortions through Medicaid as well as through insurance to Peace Corps volunteers, federal workers and military members. Currently, the amendment prohibits taxpayer funding for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or risks to the mother’s life.
