If $6 trillion in spending and a projected $1.8 trillion deficit did not make President Joe Biden’s first federal budget proposal a heavy lift, the blueprint also paves the way for taxpayer funding of abortion.
The Biden budget removes the Hyde Amendment, a provision attached to annual appropriations bills that has historically prevented federal funding of abortion in most cases for over 40 years under presidents of both parties. Named after Rep. Henry Hyde, an anti-abortion Illinois Republican, it initially passed in 1976 with over 100 Democratic votes in the House.
Biden, whose own position on abortion evolved as he began to harbor presidential ambitions in the 1980s, supported the Hyde Amendment until 2019. Many of his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination favored getting rid of the policy, including now Vice President Kamala Harris, as did liberals in Congress.
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“If I believe healthcare is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone’s zip code,” Biden said at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Georgia, where a Republican legislative majority passed laws curbing access to abortion in the run-up to the presidential race.
“There’s no rationale that can be offered that if you’re covered by the federal system, you cannot then use the federal funding to seek reproductive healthcare,” Biden said at a Planned Parenthood forum in South Carolina that same year.
Even Democratic supporters of legal abortion have tended to eschew the fight to avoid protracted budget battles and government shutdowns, a risk Biden is taking with his position on the Hyde Amendment. President Bill Clinton settled for adding a rape and incest exception in 1993. The riders continued to be passed under President Barack Obama and by the Democratic-controlled House as late as last year. For a time, the passage of Obamacare in 2010 hinged on the votes of a handful of anti-abortion Democrats, mostly Midwestern Catholics, seeking to keep the legislation from funding abortion.
Removal of the Hyde Amendment still appears difficult in all-Democratic Washington given the composition of the Senate. The upper chamber is split 50-50 and still has a small number of anti-abortion Democrats, even as the party’s ranks of abortion dissenters in the House has plummeted. Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who has emerged as a key swing vote in the deadlocked Senate, supports the Hyde Amendment, as does Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, whose father was the anti-abortion Democratic governor at the center of the Supreme Court’s 1992 Casey v. Planned Parenthood decision.
Manchin and Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, voted to impose Hyde Amendment funding restrictions on the $1.9 “American Rescue Plan” Biden signed into law earlier this year. The effort fell short of the required 60 votes to overcome a Senate filibuster, and the broader bill passed with a simple majority due to reconciliation. But it’s another indicator the votes might not be there for additional public funding of abortion.
But even if the Biden budget’s position on Hyde turns out to be symbolic, it is symbolism the Left welcomes.
“Budgets are a statement of values,” the abortion provider Planned Parenthood tweeted approvingly. “President Biden’s budget proposes to end the harmful Hyde amendment — making clear that federal law should support everyone’s ability to access health care, including safe, legal abortion, in this country.”
The imagery was clear to lawmakers and activists on the other side of the debate too. “‘Devout Catholic’ Joe is the first president in decades to cancel the Hyde Amendment from the budget,” tweeted Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican and Freedom Caucus member. “The Biden administration wants American taxpayers to pay for abortions. This is a grave injustice.”
“Once a supporter of policies that protect the lives of the unborn and their mothers, President Biden today caters to the most extreme voices within his party. The majority of Americans remain opposed to taxpayer-funded abortion,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, crediting the Hyde Amendment with saving 2.5 million lives. “We urge our congressional allies to be fearless in fighting to preserve the common-ground Hyde principle and to reject any budget that omits vital pro-life protections.”
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Polls show taxpayer funding for abortion has less public support than legal abortion. However, liberals argue Hyde negates abortion rights for women who rely on Medicaid and too poor to travel across state lines easily. March for Life Action head Tom McClusky described the Biden budget as “radically out of touch with the American people on the issue of taxpayer support for abortion.”
This could become an issue in next year’s midterm elections when Democrats will be defending slim majorities in both houses of Congress. The Supreme Court, now with a 6-3 conservative majority, is also taking up a major abortion case.
