Sen. Steve Daines criticized President Joe Biden on Tuesday for yet another effort to expand the killing of unborn babies in abortions and force taxpayers to fund their deaths.
The Catholic News Agency reports Daines, a Montana Republican who chairs the Senate Pro-Life Caucus, warned Americans that Biden plans to get rid of an Affordable Care Act rule that protects taxpayers from being forced to fund abortions through the law.
“Abortion is not healthcare and taxpayers should not be subsidizing it,” Daines said. “This is another move by President Biden and Secretary [Xavier] Becerra to promote their abortion agenda above following the law, and is even more alarming as Democrats look to increase taxpayer subsidies for Obamacare.”
The Biden administration recently introduced a new rule to eliminate the separate payment requirement for elective abortions in Obamacare health care exchange plans, according to the report.
The law requires insurance companies that provide “qualified health plans” to collect separate premium payments for elective abortions.
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In 2014, however, a Government Accountability Office report found that the requirement was not being followed. Later, the Trump administration issued a rule clarifying that insurance companies must send separate bills for abortion coverage so that taxpayers are not forced to fund it.
Now, the Biden administration is trying to reverse this action.
According to CNA:
The new rule, which will be published on July 1, would require only a single bill and payment of federally-covered services, including abortion coverage. It “proposes repeal of separate billing requirements related to the collection of separate payments for the portion of QHP premiums attributable to coverage for certain abortion services.”
Rachel Morrison, of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, slammed Biden’s plans as a “gift” to the already rich abortion industry.
“The rule flouts protections against taxpayer funding of abortion by interpreting separate abortion payments to mean combined payments. This is yet another gift to the abortion industry by the Biden administration,” Morrison said.
Daines noted that the rule is one of many ways the Biden administration is trying to force taxpayers to pay for abortions. The Hyde Amendment, a long-standing ban on taxpayer funding for elective abortions in Medicaid, is another.
“We must defeat Democrats’ radical efforts to force taxpayers to pay for abortions,” Daines wrote on Twitter.
Polls consistently show strong public opposition to taxpayer funding for abortions. In January, a 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.
A 2016 Harvard/Politico poll found similarly strong opposition to taxpayer-funded abortions. Significantly, the 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 taxpayer-funded abortion are strongly opposed to it.
