Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall is leading a coalition of 22 state attorneys general in a call upon Congress to restore the Hyde Amendment to federal spending bills and prohibit taxpayer funding of abortions.
National pro-life leaders assert the Biden-Harris administration is the most pro-abortion in history. Under the guise of “equity,” and declaring abortion is the equivalent of “women’s health care,” Biden and his supporters have vowed to eliminate the longstanding Hyde Amendment, a move that is forcing Americans to fund abortion, even those with faith beliefs and moral standards that forbid it.
“The Hyde Amendment was first enacted in 1976 following the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade, and has been reenacted every year since with broad bipartisan support,” Marshall wrote, adding:
The key to the Hyde Amendment’s four-and-a-half-decades longevity is that its purpose is clear and commonsensical: it prohibits the use of federal funds for abortions (with exceptions), on the basis that a great many taxpayers object to abortion on moral or religious grounds and, therefore, it is unconscionable to force them to pay for abortions by using their tax dollars for that purpose. Congress should resist following President Biden down this path and should instead maintain the Hyde Amendment language in the budget it ultimately passes.
A Knights of Columbus/Marist Poll released in January found 58 percent of those surveyed oppose taxpayer funding of abortion, including 31 percent of Democrats, 83 percent of Republicans, and 65 percent of independents.
The poll also found more than three-fourths of Americans (76 percent) back significant restrictions on abortion, including a majority who identify as “pro-choice.”
At the end of May, Biden, a self-described Catholic, released his Fiscal Year 2022 budget, one that would eliminate the Hyde Amendment, a provision he once wholeheartedly supported.
In April 1994, then-Sen. Biden wrote to a constituent, “Those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be compelled to pay for them.”
“Seeking the Democratic nomination for president, candidate Biden again affirmed his support for the Hyde Amendment,” Marshall wrote. “But then—forty-eight hours later—he reversed himself and denounced the Hyde Amendment after facing criticism from a small but extreme minority of the American populace: pro-abortion activists.”
“Unborn life might be nothing more than a matter of politics for the administration, but it is something quite different for us: the policy in question is one of life or death,” the attorney general asserted. “Studies of the Hyde Amendment have found that it has saved the lives of millions of unborn children—saving 2.13 million lives in its first forty years alone, and saving over 60,000 lives per year today.”
Marshall was joined in the letter to Congress by the attorneys general of Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.