“As chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, I write in support of your bill,” Burbidge said in his letter.
According to Burbidge, “protecting taxpayers from being forced to pay for abortion in violation of their conscience is a principle that has enjoyed historically broad support among Americans.”
Various federal restrictions on taxpayer abortion funding have been in place for decades. Chief among these restrictions is the Hyde Amendment, which is estimated to have saved more than 2 million lives from abortion, according to the pro-life research group Charlotte Lozier Institute.
The Hyde Amendment, first passed in 1976, has been applied to federal spending packages for 45 years, blocking the use of federal tax dollars for abortions in government programs such as Medicaid. Yet the amendment has never been made permanent law and thus must be passed for every spending bill brought before Congress.
Abortion spending restrictions such as the Hyde Amendment have traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support, with even President Joe Biden, a Catholic, voting for it as a senator.
Now, recent years have seen Democratic leaders, including Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, attempting to exclude Hyde and similar abortion spending restrictions from federal appropriations packages.
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