We knew it was coming — we knew there would be a concerted effort to make you and your neighbors pay for abortion.
As Memorial Day weekend was beginning, President Biden released his proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2022. He is asking Congress to approve a budget that removes Hyde amendment language, thus allowing your tax dollars to be used to pay for abortion. Prior to enactment of the Hyde Amendment, federal dollars, mostly Medicaid, paid for 300,000 abortions a year.
How did we know such a budget was coming? In 2019, once Biden realized that his chances of winning his party’s presidential nomination were non-existent if he did not roll over, he sold out the babies and the taxpayers. He flipped on his 45-year history as a senator who opposed taxpayer funding of abortion. Biden and the abortion industry were now one.
It was very different back in 1977 when then-Senator Biden wrote an open letter to his Delaware constituents, stating that he has consistently opposed the use of federal funds to pay for abortion “unless the life of the mother is in danger.”
Throughout the years, the pro-life movement has faced its up and downs. We’ve had pro-life presidents and pro-abortion presidents. We’ve had Republican-controlled congresses and Democrat-controlled congresses. There was one constant: the Hyde amendment prevailed.
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Why? Because a strong majority of Americans do not want their tax dollars being used to kill preborn children. Most elected officials, even Democrats, respected those desires.
No more. The abortion industry and the leadership of the Democrat party have pulled back the curtain. They no longer attempt to hide their true goal– no limits on abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy paid for by taxpayers. Unborn children are to be treated like a tumor, and any laws that provide some safeguards for women seeking an abortion need to be repealed.
The damage the Biden budget would inflict doesn’t just impact the Medicaid program, the initial intent of the Hyde Amendment. For your information, I’m including a summary from the office of pro-life Senator Steve Daines (R-MT). Sen. Daines chairs the Senate Pro-Life Caucus. This is the most thorough analysis I’ve seen of how the Biden budget would dismantle 40+ years of anti-funding protections for babies and taxpayers.
As you may have seen, President Biden’s FY22 budget calls for the elimination of the Hyde Amendment (pg. 807) – which would allow taxpayer funding for abortion on demand through Medicaid, Medicare disability, and other programs funded under the Labor/Health & Human Services appropriations bill.
The Hyde Amendment has saved an estimated more than 2.4 million lives since it first became law in 1976, and it routinely saves more than 60,000 lives in the United States every year. Nearly 6 in 10 Americans oppose using tax dollars to pay for abortions (Marist/Knights of Columbus poll, 2021).
Other pro-abortion provisions in Biden’s FY22 budget:
- Eliminates the Dornan Amendment (pg. 1272), which would allow the District of Columbia to fund abortions through its Medicaid program. When the Dornan amendment was last gutted in FY2010, D.C. funded 300 abortions through Medicaid.
- Eliminates the Aderholt Amendment (pg. 188), which would lift the Federal ban on gestating gene-edited embryos, such as three-parent embryos.
- 19% increase in funding for the Title X family planning program by $53.521 million to $340 million from $286.479 million (pg. 438). Once the Biden administration finalizes its new Title X rules, this funding will serve as a slush fund for Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry. Biden promised on the campaign trail that the public option would cover abortion on demand.
- Calls for making permanent the expanded Obamacare premium tax credits (which subsidize abortion coverage) under the American Rescue Plan Act, and the creation of a so-called “public option” for a government run health insurance plan offered through the Obamacare exchanges. (pg. 24) Biden promised during his campaign that any public option would cover abortion on demand.
- Increases the funding floor earmark for international family planning/reproductive health by $8.7 million to $583.7 million from $575 million (pg. 916). This is a slush fund for international pro-abortion organizations including International Planned Parenthood and Marie Stopes International, which can now receive these funds due to Biden’s rescission of Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance.
- 72% increase in funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) by $23.5 million to $56 million from $32.5 million (pg. 125 of State Dept request). The UNFPA promotes abortions around the world and supports China’s forced abortion and sterilization regime.
- Eliminates conditions on U.S. funds to the UNFPA, including requirements that the UNFPA not fund abortions and that funds not be directly used for country programs in China (pg. 916)
- Adds a sweeping notwithstanding authority for funding “to promote gender equality” overseas, which would bypass the Helms Amendment and Siljander Amendments, to potentially allow taxpayer funding for abortion or abortion lobbying overseas. (pg. 916)
- Eliminates the application of the Helms Amendment to the Complex Crises Fund (pg. 832), which could allow those funds to pay for abortions
- Eliminates provisions removing time limitations on embryo storage for IVF procedures funded by the Department of Defense (pg. 329)
We must make sure that everyone knows what this militantly pro-abortion administration is trying to do. Many of our friends and neighbors may support abortion but they do not want their tax dollars used in this way. Talk to them. Educate them. And urge them to contact their U.S. Senators and Representative. And, certainly, every one of our pro-life friends and neighbors must be motivated to act.
Washington must hear from us. If Hyde language is not added back into this budget, the budget must be defeated.
LifeNews Note: Carol Tobias is the president of the National Right to Life Committee.
