The nation’s Catholic bishops urged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Congressional Democrats this week to withdraw their plan to force taxpayers to pay for the killing of unborn babies in abortions.
The widely unpopular measure is part of the budget reconciliation bill. If it passes, Americans will be forced to pay for elective abortions in Medicaid and other federal programs for the first time in more than four decades.
In a letter, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops told the U.S. House and Senate not to pass “provisions facilitating and funding the destruction of unborn human life,” Vatican News reports.
Instead, they implored lawmakers and the Biden administration to “work in good faith to advance important and life-saving healthcare provisions without forcing Americans to pay for the deliberate destruction of unborn human life.”
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Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann, who chairs the bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, and Archbishop Paul S. Coakley, head of the bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, signed the letter to Congress, according to the report.
Pelosi, President Joe Biden and a number of other pro-abortion lawmakers profess to be devout Catholics, but they openly defy Christian teachings about life and family by pushing to expand the killing of unborn babies in abortions.
One of their major targets is the Hyde Amendment, a popular, decades-old measure that prohibits taxpayer funding for elective abortions in Medicaid and other federal programs. The amendment is credited with saving about 2.5 million babies’ lives. Until recently, the Hyde Amendment had strong bipartisan support in Congress, and it still has widespread support among Americans.
However, Democrat leaders recently abandoned the public on the issue and sided with the billion-dollar abortion industry in calling for forced taxpayer-funded abortions. Biden’s proposed 2022 budget specifically excludes the Hyde Amendment.
In July, Pelosi insisted that she is a “devout Catholic” while defending their plan to get rid of the Hyde Amendment. When an EWTN reporter asked about the matter, Pelosi responded by claiming taxpayer-funded abortions are “an issue of health of many women in America,” Fox News reports. Then, she invoked her Catholic faith to defend her radical views.
“As a devout Catholic and mother of five in six years, I feel that God blessed my husband and me with our beautiful family – five children in six years almost to the day,” Pelosi said. “But that may not be what we should – and it’s not up to me to dictate that that’s what other people should do, and it’s an issue of fairness and justice for poorer women in our country.”
But a Harvard University poll found that lower-income Americans strongly support the Hyde Amendment — even more so than richer Americans. Other polls also have found strong public opposition to taxpayer-funded abortions.
Many American Catholic bishops and pro-life leaders are fighting to preserve the Hyde Amendment to protect taxpayers and the lives of unborn babies. The bishops recently began a petition to Congress to oppose taxpayer-funded abortions. Find it here.
Research by the Charlotte Lozier Institute estimates the Hyde Amendment has saved about 2.5 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.
