Far-left activists took a turn down angry lane when Joe Biden’s campaign team announced that Biden intended to keep the Hyde Amendment if elected president. Forty-eight hours later, Biden and team caved. Again.
The Hyde Amendment is a longstanding federal provision that prevents taxpayer dollars from funding abortions except if the mother’s life is at stake. Biden caved the first time when an American Civil Liberties member asked if he would promise to repeal the Hyde Amendment. He responded yes.
On NBC afterward, Biden’s campaign team said Biden would not repeal the Hyde Amendment. And now, well who knows for sure. At a fundraising event in Atlanta, Biden told the audience about Hyde, “Circumstances have changed. I’m struggling with the problems that Hyde now presents.”
“When in fact there is this enormous pressure and even threat to close down clinics [sic] that are available in the past for women who do not have the funds but are able to have them paid for privately, as we’ve been able to do, that was one thing,” Biden said. “But now we see so many Republican governors denying health care to millions of the most poorest and most vulnerable Americans by refusing even Medicaid expansion. I can’t justify leaving millions of women without the access to the care they need and the ability to exercise a constitutionally protected right. If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone’s ZIP code.”
“Ending Hyde would require a massive Dem wave that take GOP seats in red states,” tweeted Bloomberg Reporter Steven Dennis.
Ending Hyde would require a massive Dem wave that takes GOP seats in red states.
You'd then have to create a reconciliation-compliant abortion spending program OR eliminate filibuster OR win a shutdown over abortion.
+2 Ds – Manchin & Casey – voted for a permanent funding ban.
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) June 6, 2019
Biden and other 2020 Democratic candidates should remember their words affect more than just their spot in the polls. To end Hyde, Democrats need to win big in the House and the Senate.
Now, pro-life Democrats and center-of-the-road Republicans may lose hope at getting a moderate Democratic candidate.
What made Biden stand out from the crowded Democratic field was not his experience or his time in the Obama administration. What a Biden campaign offered to those who hated Trump’s personality and despised the far-left agenda was a shot at a moderate president that would focus on the function of government: reflecting the will of the people.
According to a 2018 Gallup poll, the country is split evenly at 48 percent when asked whether they identified as “pro-life” or “pro-choice.”
Repealing the Hyde Amendment only to make room for a Medicare for All bill is not reflecting the will of the people. What would reflect the will of the people is allowing abortion facilities to function privately. But that’s just one girl’s opinion.
Today is a sad day for the silent majority of Democrats, and great for the small minority of far-left activists.
