President Joe Biden has unveiled his proposed budget and, unsurprisingly, it contains plenty of bad news for pro-lifers and pre-born children. Biden is the most pro-abortion president in American history, and appears determined to normalize abortion as a social good as much as possible during his term. Previous presidents, including Barack Obama, were content to push abortion while respecting the consensus that taxpayers should not fund them in the form of the Hyde Amendment. Biden’s budget excludes the Hyde Amendment, paving the way for a massive increase in taxpayer-funded abortions.
To give context for this move — which might seem like a wonky and obscure policy debate to some — I talked to Dr. Michael New, the pro-life movement’s premier statistician. New is a Research Associate of Political Science and Social Research at The Catholic University of America with a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford, and also serves as an Associate Scholar at the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute. Four of his articles on the impact of state-level abortion legislation have been published in peer-reviewed journals.
What is historically significant about President Biden’s exclusion of the Hyde Amendment in the 2021 budget?
President Biden’s proposed budget is the [first] presidential budget proposal in 28 years that fails to include the Hyde Amendment. President Clinton’s first budget proposal — released in the spring of 1993 — was the most recent presidential budget that did not include Hyde protections. However, Hyde language was included in appropriations legislation that President Clinton signed that summer. Since that time, every presidential budget proposal, including the seven remaining budgets proposed by President Clinton and all eight budgets proposed by Barack Obama, has included the Hyde Amendment.
