June 25, 2021

Pro-life Representatives Advocate for "No Taxpayer Funding of Abortion Act" on House Floor

HR 18 Sponsor Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ)
Pro-life legislators from the House of Representatives delivered speeches this week in defense of H.R. 18, the No Taxpayer Funding of Abortion Act. The legislation is a response to President Biden's 2022 budget proposal, which is the first in decades to not include Hyde Amendment protections. Without those protections, federal tax dollars will be used to fund elective abortions on demand under Medicaid.

On Tuesday, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) asked that the House consider H.R. 18, and described the importance of Hyde Amendment language:
"Let’s be clear: The Hyde Amendment is not discriminatory. Instead, it’s an essential safeguard that not only protects Americans’ right of conscience, but also has saved more than two million lives from abortion since it was first enacted in 1976.

Until recently, it was also overwhelmingly bipartisan. In fact, one of its most vocal supporters in Congress was then-Senator Joe Biden. He told one of his constituents in 1994, ‘the government should not tell those with strong convictions against abortion, such as you and I, that we must pay for them.’ Well said, Mr. President.

Since then, the purpose of Hyde hasn’t changed.  
The strong convictions of the American people against abortion haven’t changed. In poll after poll, they tell us they strongly support a wall of separation between abortions and taxpayers.

And the science hasn’t changed. If anything, it has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that human life begins at conception."

Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) the sponsor of H.R. 18, addressed the House on June 23, asking that Representatives call his bill to a vote. He decried the harm caused by abortion throughout the US:

Over 2.4 million people who would have been aborted instead survived because taxpayer funds were unavailable to effectuate their violent demise.

Growing numbers of Americans continue to be shocked to learn that the methods of abortion include dismemberment of a child’s fragile body including decapitation, and that drugs like RU 486 starve the baby to death before he or she is forcibly expelled from the womb.

The multibillion-dollar abortion industry cleverly markets the sophistry of choice while going to extraordinary lengths to ignore, trivialize and cover-up the battered baby-victim.

By reason of their age, dependency, immaturity, inconvenience, fragility and/or unwantedness, unborn children have been denied justice—and the most fundamental of all human rights, the right to life.

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