The House of Representatives passed a spending bill yesterday that doesn’t include the Hyde Amendment and greenlights taxpayer funding of abortion.
For over 40 years, the Hyde amendment has been an annual budget rider that allegedly prohibited federal Medicaid funding of abortion except in rare circumstances. I use the word “allegedly” because, as Planned Parenthood confirmed in their recent annual report, taxpayer funding was instrumental to the record-breaking number of abortions they performed thanks to the fungibility factor of money.
Two months ago, Joe Biden released a $6 trillion budget proposal that omitted any mention of the Hyde Amendment, even though the self-proclaimed Catholic has been a supporter of the Hyde Amendment since it was enacted in 1976 during his first term as US senator from Delaware. “The government should not tell those with strong convictions against abortion, such as you and I, that we must pay for them,” Biden wrote to a constituent in 1994.
But that was then and this is now. Biden’s change in heart flip-flop was expected because he condemned the Hyde Amendment during the Democrat presidential primaries after catching some flack from his opponents (via New York Post):
“If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone’s zip code,” he said in his remarks.
Biden has said he supported the Hyde Amendment for years as a senator because he believed that blocking Medicaid and other federal funds from abortion payments does not infringe on a woman’s constitutional rights.
Biden, a Roman Catholic who personally opposes abortion, pointed to recent anti-abortion laws passed in states like Georgia to explain his position reversal.
“I can’t justify leaving millions of women without the access to care they need, and the ability to exercise their constitutionally protected right,” he said. (emphasis mine)
Biden’s omission of the Hyde Amendment was praised by anti-life groups.
All* Above All — an organization that describes itself as “a catalyst for abortion justice” with the vision of “a world where abortion care is affordable, available, and supported for everyone who needs it.” The pro-abortion group celebrated the news in a tweet: ”We did it! We introduced the budget without Hyde restrictions. #BeBoldEndHyde.”
The House spending bill providing taxpayer funding of abortion gives Uncle Joe exactly what he needs to pacify the far-left. And after passing the legislation, members of the House Baby-butcher Caucus could hardly contain their barbarous delight:
“Finally, the right to reproductive freedom has been recognized by the majority of Democrats.” ~ Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA)
“For decades, the Hyde amendment has prevented women of color and low-income people from receiving basic healthcare. This is discrimination. The legal right to an abortion is meaningless if you are unable to afford one.” ~ Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA)
The Hyde Amendment is nothing but “pro-life incrementalism” but it remains popular with Pro-Life, Inc. because it gives the illusion of doing something to save unborn babies without actually doing so. Still, a few of the usual “pro-life” suspects immediately whipped out their Democrats bad/Republicans good playbook following passage of spending bill (via Washington Examiner):
Anti-abortion rights advocates, such as March for Life President Jeanne Mancini, railed against Democrats ahead of the vote on Thursday, calling the Hyde Amendment an important provision to “protect the American public from funding or providing abortions against their will.”
“Pro-abortion Democrats have again eliminated pro-life riders,” such as the Hyde Amendment, from the spending bill, Mancini said. “No one should be forced to compromise their values, but especially not on this life-or-death issue.”
If only March for Life and the rest of Pro-Life, Inc. actually treated abortion as a “life-or-death issue,” perhaps the Hyde Amendment wouldn’t be necessary, since abolishing abortion entirely is the only way to truly protect life. As things are now, their compromise and capitulation concerning abortion has done little more than line their pockets to buy access to the centers of political power.
When all is said and done, March for Life and others like them have killed more unborn babies than they have saved.
Recently, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments in a Mississippi abortion case in what many are calling the biggest threat to Roe v. Wade in decades (based on history, I doubt it will change anything). Shortly after hearing of the court’s decision to take the case, Joe Biden reaffirmed his commitment to seeing Roe v. Wade become federal law regardless of what the Supreme Court decides in the case.
“The president is committed to codifying Roe, regardless of the … outcome of this case,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at the time.
Democrats (and a few Republicans) in the House and Senate are already working on ways to help Biden achieve this objective. Shortly after he introduced his spending bill minus the Hyde Amendment, Democrats in Congress introduced the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), a bill that codifies Roe v. Wade.
The Women’s Health Protection Act states that its purpose is to “permit health care providers to provide abortion services without limitations or requirements.” It also states that abortion laws and regulations will be considered illegal if they “do not significantly advance reproductive health or the safety of abortion services.”
WHPA also states that in order for an abortion law or regulation to be considered legal, it cannot “make abortion services more difficult to access,” nor can it “single out” abortion services with restrictions “that are more burdensome than those restrictions imposed on medically comparable procedures.”
Unfortunately, the House spending bill that eliminates the Hyde Amendment and greenlights taxpayer funding of abortion is likely only the beginning of the coming abortion holocaust.
More babies were murdered last year at taxpayer expense than in any other year in our nation’s history, and now that Democrats are in control of the agenda, abortion without limits has become a top priority. This means that despite the politically motivated rhetoric we hear from pro-abortion and pro-life groups, the right to murder unborn babies without limits remains alive and well.
Sadly, that’s more than we can say for the tens of millions of babies slaughtered in the womb and denied their right to life since Roe was decided in 1973.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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