Pro-Life Leaders Condemn 'Unprecedented' Abortion Funding in Democrats' COVID Bill
Republican leaders and pro-life advocates condemned the massive coronavirus relief package that cleared Congress on Wednesday, telling the Daily Caller News Foundation that the bill disregards pro-life protections and funnels massive amounts of funding to abortion providers.
“Because this bill funnels money into subsidizing private insurance that includes abortion coverage, it’s going to be difficult to even ballpark the cash this bill will send to Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers,” Republican Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse told the DCNF.
“It’s totally unprecedented to use the reconciliation process to expand federal funding of abortion this way, and Congress didn’t even have so much as a hearing on this bill. It’s unconscionable.”
The $1.9 trillion bill will appropriate $50 million to the Department Health and Human Services. Under recent changes from the Biden administration, HHS could send that money to abortion clinics, a policy expert previously told the DCNF.
Democrats also removed pro-life protections that would have applied the Hyde Amendment to the relief bill — which is almost half the cost of the United States’ federal budget.
“To call the bill the Democrats passed ‘COVID relief’ is generous,” Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley told the DCNF.
“What does ignoring decades of precedent set by the Hyde Amendment and giving millions of federal dollars to abortion providers have to do with beating a pandemic?”
“Democrats refused to work across the aisle to provide real relief to Americans, and instead shoveled millions to funding Biden’s entire first-term, radical left-wing agenda,” Hawley said.
Pro-life groups were quick to condemn the passage of the bill on Wednesday.
“Given the sheer size of this bill, it has the potential to be the largest expansion of abortion funding since Obamacare,” March for Life president Jeanne Mancini said in a statement.
Both Mancini and National Right to Life president Carol Tobias emphasized in statements that the abortion funding in the bill ignores popular American sentiment. A majority of Americans do not want their tax dollars to fund abortions at home or abroad, a recent poll found.
“Abortion is not health care and forcing taxpayers to prop up the abortion industry during a pandemic does not help the millions of Americans deeply impacted by COVID,” Tobias said in a statement.
“Pro-abortion Democrats are more interested in funding Planned Parenthood and abortion providers than in providing real solutions for the American people.”
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A version of this article appeared on the Daily Caller News Foundation website.
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