Conservatives are calling upon their fellow citizens to oppose the Democrats’ spending legislation that no longer includes the Hyde Amendment, a provision that has blocked taxpayer funding of abortion in the United States.
A letter signed by over 100 pro-life leaders at the Conservative Action Project site reads:
For nearly fifty years, the Hyde amendment has received bipartisan support as a national policy to ensure that U.S. taxpayers did not pay for abortions. Hyde-related policies have been consistently applied in other federal programs to protect the vulnerable at home, abroad, in research, and to protect the conscience rights of medical providers who object to abortions.
In June, House Democrats blocked a piece of legislation that would have codified the Hyde Amendment permanently into U.S. law:
Pro-life leaders view the Biden-Harris administration as 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 Hyde Amendment and, consequently, force Americans to fund abortion, even those for whom such an action would violate their faith beliefs and moral standards.
At the end of May, Biden, a self-described Catholic, released his Fiscal Year 2022 budget, one that would eradicate the Hyde Amendment, which 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.”
According to data compiled by Family Research Council (FRC), during the 25 years between 1994-2019, “Planned Parenthood has reported performing 7,059,206 abortions and receiving $9.7 billion in total taxpayer funding.”
The FRC report continued:
Over the same period, while total abortions in the U.S. have decreased, Planned Parenthood’s share of total abortions reported to the Center for Disease Control have increased from a mere 10.5 percent in 1994 to 55.8 percent in 2018, the last year for which numbers are available. At the same time, annual taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood has nearly quadrupled, from $163.1 million in 1994 to $618.1 million in 2019.
FRC noted the House is weighing a spending bill that repeals the Hyde Amendment and includes $400 million for Title X (federal family planning grant program), the second largest source of federal funding for Planned Parenthood, and an amount that represents a 28 percent increase in family planning grants to advance Planned Parenthood’s abortion business.
FRC President Tony Perkins, one of the cosigners of the national letter, said Planned Parenthood “has become America’s abortion giant, and it has been taxpayer dollars that have bankrolled the baby-killing industry.”
Perkins explained further:
Planned Parenthood now performs more abortions annually than every other abortion supplier in America. Far from escaping its racist, eugenicist roots, it increasingly targets minority babies by locating the vast majority of its abortion facilities near black or Hispanic neighborhoods. Planned Parenthood does not deserve billions in government funding. Even pro-choice Americans have long agreed that taxpayers should not be forced to fund abortions. The time has come to put an end to the forced partnership between taxpayers and Planned Parenthood.
The national leaders also wrote concerning the lives that have been saved through Americans’ protection via the Hyde Amendment:
The Hyde amendment and its related policies are estimated to have saved the lives of 2.4 million babies since its inception. Revoking the Hyde amendment, and upending the bipartisan consensus that has supported its application, is a drastic step that shreds any vestige or pretense that Democrats are anything but radically pro-abortion.
“We urge all conservatives, and anyone who values the sanctity and dignity of human life from conception until natural death, to oppose spending legislation which does not contain the Hyde amendment and key related pro-life policies,” the leaders said.
A list of all the letter’s signatories can be found here.
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