Activists Already Licking Their Chops at Getting Taxpayers To Pay for Abortions Amid Potential Biden Admin
Pro-choice advocates often have appealed to moral relativism to support their position on abortion, asserting that everyone has a right to decide how they feel on the issue, and pro-life people have no right to impose their beliefs on others.
Not only does this not address the argument that abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being, but what’s interesting is that the pro-choice movement increasingly has begun to engage in the thinking they claim to condemn by pushing for taxpayer funding of abortions.
The Hyde Amendment prevents federal tax dollars from funding most abortions, but as seen at a hearing held Tuesday by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, many pro-choice activists have set their sights on having it overturned.
As The Associated Press reported, presumptive president-elect Joe Biden says he supports repeal of the Hyde Amendment and would appoint pro-abortion politicians to major positions in his administration.
Which means pro-choice advocates might get their wish when it comes to forcing taxpayer money to go toward abortions.
At the hearing, titled “The Impact on Women Seeking an Abortion but are Denied Because of an Inability to Pay,” representatives from various abortion advocacy groups levied false claims against the Hyde Amendment to support their position.
Their arguments against the amendment relied on assumptions, as the measure has saved more than 2 million lives, according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, protecting women in difficult situations from feeling as if abortion is their only option.
Still, pro-choice advocates such as Herminia Palacio — president and CEO of the Guttmacher Institute, a former “special affiliate” of Planned Parenthood, according to Live Action — see the Hyde Amendment as a barrier to abortion.
“The harmful burdens of the Hyde Amendment are intentionally and unjustly imposed on black or brown people, and on people with low incomes,” Palacio said to the committee. “In other words, on people who have been historically marginalized.”
Palacio asserted that for this reason, “The Hyde Amendment is a racist policy,” but there are several problems with her argument.
The most obvious problem is that the issue of women facing challenges to accessing an abortion does not prove these restrictions are wrong, unless Palacio can demonstrate that abortion does not take the life of an innocent human being.
It also is difficult to connect the abortion industry to any form of racial justice.
A recent letter signed by hundreds of past and current Planned Parenthood of Greater New York employees confronted the organization’s long history of racism and eugenics. And Buzzfeed News reviewed an internal audit of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America conducted this year that concluded PPFA’s treatment of black employees “does not line up with its social justice-driven mission.”
Also, while Palacio pointed to the coalition of people she claimed needed access to abortions, she did not address the wide spectrum of Americans who are opposed to using federal funds to pay for them.
A 2016 YouGov poll found 55 percent of Americans support the Hyde Amendment, including 41 percent of Democrats, 56 percent of independents and 73 percent of Republicans.
The poll surveyed 1,000 respondents through web-based interviews, weighing scores based on gender, age, race, education, political ideology, geographic region and voter registration and containing a margin of error of + or – 4.8 percentage points.
But perhaps what’s most interesting about these claims about public funding being necessary to help poor women afford abortions is what the abortion industry stands to gain financially if abortions are subsidized by taxpayers.
While the Hyde Amendment prohibits taxpayer funding of most abortions at the federal level, an analysis by Live Action showed how the abortion industry often profits from taxpayer dollars at the state level.
In each example, the more that taxpayer funding for abortions increased, so did the number of abortions being performed, meaning the abortion industry has a financial conflict of interest when it comes to repealing the Hyde Amendment.
The irony is that the same industry that’s arguing the procedure is too expensive for low-income women is the one that’s setting the price for an abortion.
It’s also worth noting that a separate report from Live Action estimated the cost of the abortion pill averages under $100, but the abortion industry sells it to clients at nearly six times the cost.
Guttmacher and other abortion advocacy groups claim repealing the Hyde Amendment would help women, but they’re silent on the way the industry has wrongfully been profiting from women.
Shifting the burden of cost to taxpayers without any regard to their views on abortion, all while allowing the industry to continue gaining financially from women, is unethical.
Mothers who are not prepared for a child deserve access to care and support, something the thousands of pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) throughout the country are willing to provide.
A 2019 report Charlotte Lozier Institute found PRCs provided nearly 2 million people in the United States with free services, and prior research from the same organization in 2017 found PRCs actually save communities at least $161 million annually.
Instead of imposing a specific viewpoint on the public — something pro-choice activists claim to be against — allocating resources toward alleviating the financial burdens of women seems like a more viable alternative.
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