(The Center Square) – More than 100 pro-life organizations are calling on Congress to end forced taxpayer funding of abortion that loopholes in Obamacare allow for, stating the Hyde Amendment should be preventing this issue.
President of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America Marjorie Dannenfelser told The Center Square that “Congress must not extend Obamacare subsidies without Hyde protections.”
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America led a letter from 105 pro-life organizations and sent to Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, according to a press release.
“Since Obamacare’s creation, pro-life lawmakers have consistently opposed its abortion funding, and they can’t back down now,” Dannenfelser said. “Obamacare is the largest ever deviation from Hyde and the largest expansion of taxpayer funded abortion since Roe v. Wade.”
The Hyde Amendment works to protect “the unborn by stopping taxpayers from being forced to pay for abortion and for health insurance plans that include coverage of abortion,” as explained in the letter to Congress.
Marjorie Dannenfelser told The Center Square that “abortion – the intentional ending of human life – is not health care and should not be subsidized as such.”
Dannenfelser said: “When our tax dollars subsidize abortion, more lives are lost – more babies killed and more mothers harmed.”
“The clear majority of Americans reject taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, and we should never be forced to bankroll violence against the most vulnerable among us,” Dannenfelser said. “Women deserve compassionate care, not abortion, and every child deserves a chance at life.”
Dannenfelser told The Center Square that the Democratic party is “fully in lock step with the radical abortion lobby position of abortion on demand, any time for any reason, paid for by the taxpayer.”
“As we speak, [Democrats] are currently keeping the government shut down over Obamacare, demanding the government make the Obamacare subsidies that cover abortion plans permanent,” Dannenfelser said.
Policy director Paul Dupont of the American Principles Project – an organization that signed onto the letter – told The Center Square: “Congress should ensure that any relevant new funding, including any renewal of these Obamacare subsidies, incorporates the Hyde Amendment to ensure no federal taxpayer is forced to pay for abortion.”
“For decades, there has been political consensus that federal tax dollars should not fund abortion,” Dupont said.
“The majority of Americans agree on this.” Dupont said. “Congress has long applied the Hyde Amendment to all relevant federal funding, whether Republicans or Democrats were in control.”
Dupont told The Center Square: “Unfortunately, some far-left Democrats in recent years have tried to undermine this common ground by finding other ways to fund abortion, including through Obamacare subsidies.”
“This violates both longstanding practice and the position of most Americans, and it shouldn’t be allowed to continue,” Dupont said.
Priests for Life national director Frank Pavone told The Center Square that his organization and the 104 others who signed the letter are asking Congress to close Obamacare’s loopholes that allow for taxpayer funding of abortion “so that the prohibition on funding be extended to these healthcare exchanges.”
Like Dannenfelser and Dupont, Pavone told The Center Square that most Americans oppose tax dollars funding abortion, while also adding there are legal problems associated with the issue.
“Beside the fact that polling shows abortion funding to be extremely unpopular, the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts have ruled multiple times over the last 50 years that the legality of abortion does not impose an obligation on the state to fund it,” Pavone said.
Pavone told The Center Square that in the recent Dobbs decision, the Supreme Court said that the point of whether abortion should be allowed in the first place “should be left to the robust debate and political process of the American people.”
“If the very legality of abortion should be left to that process so should its funding,” Pavone said.
“For all the talk of freedom of choice in the abortion lobby, it is interesting how they consistently try to force taxpayers to fund it against their choice,” Pavone said.
