President Biden’s proposed budget omits mention of the Hyde Amendment, opening the door to publicly funded abortions.
The monster $6 trillion spending plan makes no mention of the amendment, a longstanding budget rider that bars federal funding for nearly all abortions through Medicaid, the military, and other tax-supported programs.
Biden, who is Catholic, was a supporter of the amendment since it was enacted in 1976 — when he was a first-term US senator from Delaware — and included in federal spending bills since then.
But he abruptly reversed himself on the issue at a Democratic National Committee event in 2019, after his presidential campaign took flak from the party’s left wing.
“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,” Biden said in 2019.
Advocacy group All* Above All cheered the news. “”We did it!” the group tweeted, “We introduced the budget without Hyde restrictions.”
President Biden had previously been a supporter of the Hyde Amendment’s inclusion in the budget. Liliana Engelbrecht/ReutersMore than 4,400 Notre Dame University students and alumni signed an open letter this month citing Biden’s Hyde turnabout as reason to exclude him from the Catholic school’s commencement ceremony — which first-term presidents usually attend.
“President Biden today caters to the most extreme voices within his party,” Marjorie Dannenfelser of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List said.
A January Marist/Knights of Columbus poll found that 58 percent of Americans oppose the use of public funds to pay for abortion.






