WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – Forty-eight Republican senators signed a letter to Democrat congressional leaders Tuesday warning them not to touch the pro-life Hyde Amendment amid the Left’s current fervor to “codify” abortion on demand.
Traditionally included every year in federal budgets with little objection, the Hyde Amendment is estimated to have saved more than 2 million lives since its adoption decades ago by forbidding most taxpayer dollars from funding abortions directly except for cases of rape, incest, or threat to a mother’s life.
Led by Sens. Steve Daines of Montana and James Lankford of Oklahoma, Senate Republicans sent a letter addressed primarily to Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York reasserting “unwavering support for the Hyde Amendment and all other longstanding pro-life protections.”
“On February 5, 2021, we wrote to you that ‘[w]e are committed to vote against the advancement of any legislation that would eliminate or weaken the Hyde Amendment or any other current-law pro-life protections, or otherwise undermine existing Federal pro-life policy,’” the letter recalls. “We firmly renew this commitment for FY 2023.”
“We are united in our resolve to preserve more than 45 years of consensus against taxpayer funding for abortion,” the statement declares. “We urge you to start where we finished by making a baseline commitment to maintain the same pro-life protections that were included in Public Law 117-103, and to eschew any taxpayer-funded giveaways that benefit the multi-billion-dollar abortion industry. The American people, born and preborn, deserve nothing less.”
In March, President Joe Biden submitted a proposed budget for fiscal year 2023 that called for repealing the Hyde Amendment plus other pro-life spending restrictions, and included funding increases for various programs through which the federal government supports the abortion industry, including Title X, the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, and the United Nations Population Fund.
The next month, a draft was leaked of a majority opinion by conservative Justice Samuel Alito for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which concerns Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. The draft, which is authentic but not confirmed to reflect the U.S. Supreme Court’s final decision in the case, overturns 1973’s Roe v. Wade as “egregiously wrong from the start,” and if it is ultimately what the Court decides will have massive ramifications for the abortion debate.
In preparation for a near future in which the elected branches of Congress may once again be free to directly prohibit abortion, Democrats and their allies have renewed their pushes to codify the “right” to abortion in federal and state law, including measures to mandate direct taxpayer funding of abortions.
It remains to be seen how Biden’s FY 2023 budget will fare in an evenly-divided Senate, where moderate Democrat and crucial swing vote Joe Manchin has previously said he would not support past spending deals if they eliminated Hyde.