Washington D.C., May 28, 2021 / 13:59 pm
President Joe Biden on Friday did not include a 45 year-old pro-life policy in his final budget request to Congress for the 2022 fiscal year, thus allowing for funding of abortions.
The Hyde Amendment, enacted into law since 1976, bars federal funding of most elective abortions in Medicaid. It is not permanent law, and is attached as a rider to budget bills specifying that the health care funding therein cannot be used for elective abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is at stake.
Biden has pledged to repeal the policy, and did not include it in his final budget request released on Friday.
The chair of the U.S. bishops’ pro-life committee on Friday decried taxpayer-funded abortion as a “failure” that will “subsidize the deaths of unborn children.”
“Taxpayer-funded abortion represents a failure to serve women in their maternity by funding despair and death instead of hope and life,” stated Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas, chair of the U.S. bishops’ pro-life committee.
“These resources would be far better spent supporting women in crisis pregnancies and struggling new mothers so that no woman ever feels economic pressure to have an abortion,” he said.
While noting “aspects to President Biden’s budget proposal that will assist vulnerable people,” Archbishop Naumann added that “Congress must reject the Administration’s proposal to subsidize the deaths of unborn children.”
“For more than four decades, the Hyde family of pro-life policies has kept American taxpayers out of the abortion business,” stated Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, on Friday.