McConnell Warns: Democrats Pushing ‘Radical’ Plan for Tax-Funded Abortion

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is warning of a “radical” plan by Congressional Democrats to legalize tax-funded abortion and is pledging to “continue standing up for life.”

McConnell (R-KY) made the comments in a Senate floor speech on July 15, the same week the House Appropriations Committee advanced a budget without the Hyde Amendment, a provision that bans tax-funded abortion and dates back to the 1970s. It must be reauthorized annually. The current version allows for exceptions for rape, incest and to save the mother’s life. 

McConnell said the idea of passing a budget without the Hyde Amendment is so “radical that it hasn’t been done for decades.”

The amendment, he said, is “common sense.” 

“Since the 1970s, abortion has claimed the lives of more than 60 million unborn children,” he said. “But at the very, very least, the mainstream, bipartisan Hyde Amendment has ensured that taxpayers’ hard-earned money is not funneled into this brutal practice. A broad, bipartisan coalition agreed the American taxpayer should not be forced to underwrite this nightmare. And by the way, a strong majority of Americans still agree with that proposition.”

Democrats have abandoned a 40-year-old bipartisan consensus on the Hyde Amendment.

Republicans will continue standing up for life, taxpayers, and for the conscience rights of the majority of Americans who don’t want the government laundering their money to abortion providers. pic.twitter.com/SlcUsNaI8t

— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) July 15, 2021

Every Republican and Democratic president since the 1970s, including Democratic Presidents Clinton and Obama, signed budgets that included the Hyde Amendment. 

McConnell noted that President Biden, as a senator, supported the Hyde Amendment. McConnell quoted a 1994 letter from Biden to a constituent that read, “Those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be compelled to pay for them.” Biden now opposes the amendment. 

“He let the demands of the increasingly radical Left overcome a principle he’d held for decades,” McConnell said. “… In today’s Democratic party, there is no room to dissent from the far left’s culture war – even in the most modest, most longstanding, most widely popular ways.”

Senate Republicans, McConnell said, will “continue standing up for life, standing up for payers, and standing up for the conscience rights of millions – millions of Americans who don’t want the government laundering their hard-earned money to abortion providers.”

“Republicans will still stand with the majority of the American people,” he added, “even if our colleagues across the aisle have given in to the most radical voices.”

Related:

Hyde Amendment Has Saved 2 Million Unborn Lives, Attorneys General Tell Congress

Meghan McCain Blasts Biden on Abortion: ‘He’s Gonna Have to Ultimately Talk to His Creator’

Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Chip Somodevilla/Staff

Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.

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