NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE T he House of Representatives voted 221 to 213 to pass an amendment on Thursday to the National Defense Authorization Act that would rescind the Biden administration’s new policy of using taxpayer money to fund travel for elective abortions sought by Department of Defense personnel. On Friday, the House approved final passage of the annual defense-funding bill 219 to 210, with four Democrats voting “yes” and four Republicans voting “no.”
For decades, federal law has prohibited the Department of Defense from funding elective abortion. “Funds available to the Department of Defense may not be used to perform abortions except where the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term or in a case in which the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest,” reads 10 U.S. Code 1093. The same law also prohibits elective abortions from being performed at any Department of Defense facility. But in February of this year, the Department of Defense implemented a new policy to use taxpayer dollars to fund transportation and lodging for DOD personnel who travel out of state to seek an elective abortion because the procedure is illegal in the state where they’re stationed.
The Biden administration argues this policy does not run afoul of the law because the abortion doctor is still paid with private funds. Pro-life groups and House Republicans contend that the existing statute prohibits taxpayer-funding of anything solely necessary to perform an elective abortion — including travel just as much as pre-op appointments.
“Republicans are not the ones trying to change the status quo. It is the Biden Administration wanting to dip into the pockets of taxpayers and illegally use that money to pay for abortion travel,” National Right to Life Committee president Carol Tobias said in a statement praising passage of the amendment.
It has been a long-standing federal policy that tax dollars should not fund elective abortions. Since the 1970s, every annual appropriations bill funding Medicaid has included the Hyde amendment, which prohibits federal funding of elective abortions for Medicaid recipients. The policy is estimated to have saved more than 2 million human lives since its inception, and it enjoyed widespread bipartisan support until recent years. “The government should not tell those with strong convictions against abortion, such as you and I, that we must pay for them,” then-senator Joe Biden wrote to a constituent in 1994. Biden still supported the Hyde amendment while serving as vice president but abandoned his opposition in 2019 as he sought the nomination of an increasingly pro-abortion Democratic Party.
On Thursday, only one House Democrat — Henry Cuellar of Texas — voted to rescind the Biden administration’s policy of funding travel for elective abortions. But a strong majority of Americans still generally oppose taxpayer funding of abortion. A Marist poll conducted earlier this year for the Knights of Columbus asked Americans: “Do you strongly support, support, oppose, or strongly oppose using tax dollars to pay for a woman’s abortion?” Sixty percent of respondents said they opposed it.