As President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats prepare to move forward with a radical pro-abortion agenda, Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Banks and approximately 200 GOP legislators are asking House and Senate leaders to preserve the Hyde Amendment.
In a letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Chuck Schumer, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Banks and his colleagues wrote that the removal or weakening of the bipartisan legislation banning taxpayer-funded abortions will severely hurt Americans, the pro-life community, and the bipartisan efforts of politicians for decades.
“Repealing these pro-life provisions would destroy nearly half a century of bipartisan consensus. Each year since 1976, Congress has included Hyde protections in annually enacted appropriations. No president in American history has ever vetoed an appropriations bill due to its inclusion of the Hyde Amendment,” the letter notes. “Moreover, President Obama maintained the Hyde Amendment in each of his budget proposals. As recent as June 2019, former Vice President Joe Biden supported the Hyde Amendment and acknowledged that it works harmoniously with federal funding for women’s healthcare.”
Rescinding the Hyde Amendment, the letter points out, is not a favored outcome by many Americans, but the Democrats’ insistence to remove it “further erodes public trust in government by ignoring mainstream public opinion in favor of placating the radical Left.”
“The Hyde Amendment alone has saved the lives of over 2 million innocent babies and continues to protect the conscience rights of a vast majority of Americans opposed to publicly funded abortions,” the letter continued. “We cannot allow the Hyde Amendment and other important pro-life safeguards to be decimated by Congressional Democrats.”
The letter, which has found support and encouragement from pro-life groups such as Heritage Action for America, March for Life Action, Family Research Council, Susan B. Anthony List, Eagle Forum, Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and Concerned Women for America, Accordingly, concludes with a pledge from the GOP congressmen and women to “vote against any government funding bill that eliminates or weakens the Hyde Amendment or other current-law, pro-life appropriations provisions.”
In addition to potential congressional action erasing pro-life measures, Biden also has an extensive and radical pro-abortion agenda that he plans to execute in the next couple of weeks.
One of the first directives Biden and his team plan to reverse is the Mexico City policy, which bans U.S. foreign subsidies from being directed to organizations that perform abortions. Under Democrats’ executive control and with the support of Planned Parenthood, the largest baby-killing agency in the United States, this policy will be undone.
Biden also promised to reinstate federal funding to the United Nations Population Fund, which offers encourages women and young girls around the world to obtain abortions, after Trump cut the United States’ flow of resources to the program in 2017.