Abortion activists are putting continuous pressure on President Joe Biden to overturn the long-standing Hyde Amendment and force American taxpayers to fund the killing of unborn babies in abortions.
“If you have an unwanted or unviable pregnancy, access to abortion is infrastructure. It can make or break your economic security and your health,” pro-abortion freelancer Emily Crockett wrote at Washington Monthly on Monday.
Taxpayer-funded abortions for any reason without limits are the new goal of the pro-abortion lobby. To make that happen, they want Biden to get rid of the Hyde Amendment, which has been in place since 1976. The amendment 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 – including Biden – recently abandoned the popular position on the issue and now want to force taxpayers to pay for abortions.
Crockett argued that the amendment harms women by “forcing” them “to travel hundreds of miles” and “pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars out of pocket” to abort their unborn babies. She claimed this even though abortion activists also argue that abortions are a woman’s “choice,” and some states already force taxpayers to pay for elective abortions.
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She also claimed the Hyde Amendment is racist because it “disproportionately” affects African American women, making it more difficult for them to abort their unborn babies. But this argument does not match the facts.
African American women have a disproportionately high number of abortions compared to other racial groups. While they make up 13 percent of the population, they have 36 percent of all abortions. According to the Guttmacher Institute, the abortion rate among black women is almost five times higher than it is among white women.
Crockett acknowledged that it may be difficult to get rid of the Hyde Amendment because Congress also must approve it, but she said Biden has options.
She wrote:
Because the Hyde Amendment is not a permanent law but an annual rider in the must-pass appropriations bill, eliminating it is politically plausible. It doesn’t need to be repealed; it just needs not to be renewed. Biden can propose a budget that doesn’t include Hyde and back it up with a veto threat. He could go even further by supporting the EACH Act, which would permanently reverse Hyde by requiring public insurance plans to cover abortion. …
It’s hardly a guarantee, especially with [pro-life Democrat] Joe Manchin in the Senate, but pro-choice policies aren’t always a dealbreaker for Manchin.
Polls consistently show that most Americans oppose taxpayer funding for abortions. 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.
Earlier this year, pro-life Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate issued joint statements promising to fight against any effort to force 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, including about 60,000 each year. 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.
