FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 12, 2021
Contact: Prudence Robertson, [email protected]
At Their Own Political Peril Democrats Double Down on Abortion Extremism; Force Taxpayers to Fund Abortion on Demand
Washington, D.C. – Today the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS) will mark up a draft spending bill that eliminates the Hyde Amendment, forcing taxpayers to fund abortion on demand, and that eliminates key federal anti-discrimination protections for pro-life health care workers and institutions. The action follows several other bills that would dramatically expand taxpayer funding of abortion domestically and overseas.
President Biden’s previously released budget also gutted the decades-old, bipartisan Hyde Amendment and would force taxpayers to fund abortion on demand through birth. House Appropriations Committee Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), backed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is making good on her pledge to eliminate Hyde from this year’s budget. In April, Republican members of the Appropriations Committee sent DeLauro a letter strongly opposing any spending bill that weakens pro-life protections. In the Senate, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has also promised to support Hyde “in every way possible.”
The national pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List) blasted the Democrats’ spending bills in a statement:
“Biden-Pelosi Democrats are scrapping decades of bipartisan consensus to force taxpayers to fund abortion, doubling down on extremism to appease an increasingly radical base,” said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “Democrats’ abortion agenda does violence to the poor and vulnerable, devastating the minority communities for whom they claim to advocate. For more than 40 years, the Hyde family of pro-life policies has protected unborn children and their mothers and kept taxpayers out of the abortion business. We know Hyde saves lives – nearly 2.5 million lives, in fact. Additional research shows that funding abortions leads to more abortions and hurts women, failing to solve existing social problems and compounding them with fresh injustice.
“Yet House Democrats don’t just want to expand abortion on demand through birth at home and abroad – they would also cancel longstanding federal law that protects pro-life doctors, nurses, hospitals and insurers from government coercion to participate in destroying innocent lives. This bill is too extreme to pass the Senate and is a major political liability for pro-abortion Democrats.”
In June SBA List launched a six-figure digital ad campaign targeting two vulnerable U.S. senators and six U.S. House members in competitive districts to expose their pro-abortion extremism.
Recent polling shows 77% of Americans oppose using taxpayer dollars to promote abortion overseas, and 58% oppose using taxpayer money to fund abortions in the United States.
Earlier this year, more than 60 pro-life leaders sent a letter to congressional leadership urging them to fight for the Hyde Amendment and other similar longstanding pro-life riders during the appropriations process. Learn more at sbalist.org/hyde.
SBA List is a network of 900,000 pro-life Americans nationwide, dedicated to ending abortion by electing national leaders and advocating for laws that save lives, with a special calling to promote pro-life women leaders.
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