A bill that would force Americans to pay for abortions is moving forward in Congress.
House Democrats voted last week to eliminate the Hyde Amendment, the long-standing legislative provision that ensures U.S. taxpayer dollars don’t go to funding abortions.
For more than 40 years, it has had bipartisan support. But 32 out of 33 Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee voted to eliminate the amendment, rejecting the conscience rights of pro-life Americans.
The Hyde Amendment has been included in appropriations legislation on a bipartisan basis every year since 1976.
It has been credited with saving more than 2.4 million lives with approximately 60,000 lives saved each year according to more than 20 peer-reviewed studies.
President Biden had been a strong supporter of the Hyde Amendment, but he’s reversed that position since moving into the White House.
During an interview with CBN News’s Faith Nation program last week, U.S. Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI) said it shows how far President Biden has moved to the left.
“Now he has thrown the taxpayers under the bus and is now active when you start to subsidize abortion, you encourage more of it and he’s very much changed his tune on that,” he said. “So it’s very disappointing.”
Moolenaar also said he has hoped the Senate will protect the Hyde Amendment.
***Please sign up for CBN Newsletters and download the CBN News app to ensure you keep receiving the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective.***
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) echoed Moolenaar’s statement in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday.
“For decades, nearly his entire career, then-Senator Joe Biden was a reliable supporter of Hyde protections,” the Kentucky Republican said. “But a couple of years ago on the presidential campaign trail, our former colleague changed his tune. He let the demands of the increasingly radical left overcome a principle he had held literally for decades.”
McConnell said Biden’s opposition to the Hyde Amendment is just another way the current administration sold itself as moderate and unifying to voters, but “is now spiraling way, way to the left.”
McConnell also said Republicans would continue to resist the effort to get rid of the amendment. He promised his party would “continue standing up for millions of Americans who don’t want the government laundering their hard-earned money to abortion providers.”
As CBN News reported earlier this month, in a strongly-worded letter to President Biden, more than 170 members of Congress warned that his 2022 budget proposal is “an affront to the majority of Americans who do not want their tax dollars funding abortion on demand resulting in the death of children in the womb.”
The letter signed by 172 House members was released July 1.
“We know you understand this. You get it—or at least you once did,” the lawmakers wrote to Biden.
“Years ago, you wrote a constituent explaining that a law against funding for abortion would ‘protect both the woman and her unborn child.’ You wrote: ‘I have consistently—on no fewer than 50 occasions—voted against federal funding of abortions…those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be compelled to pay for them’,” they reminded him.
“And in your book, Promises to Keep, you wrote: ‘I’ve stuck to my middle-of-the-road position on abortion for more than thirty years. I still vote against partial-birth abortion and federal funding,'” the letter continued.
The House members’ letter also points out other policies in Biden’s proposed budget, which would:
- Increase funding for abortion providers—both domestically and internationally—through the Title X program and through the International Population Control Program;
- Provide additional funding for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)—and weakened requirements for that funding—despite UNFPA’s complicity with the Chinese Communist Party’s coercive family planning policies;
- And repeal the Dornan Amendment, which prevents federal or District of Columbia (DC) revenues from being used to pay for abortion in DC.
