Biden, whose own position on abortion evolved as he began to harbor presidential ambitions in the 1980s, supported the Hyde Amendment up until 2019.
“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 declared 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.
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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.
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But even if the Biden budget’s position on Hyde turns out to be symbolic, it is symbolism the Left welcomes.
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“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.”
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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.”
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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.
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