{"id":241375,"date":"2021-03-09T07:37:52","date_gmt":"2021-03-09T13:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=241375"},"modified":"2021-03-09T16:17:24","modified_gmt":"2021-03-09T22:17:24","slug":"lankford-taxpayers-forced-pay-abortions-covid-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/lankford-taxpayers-forced-pay-abortions-covid-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Sen. Lankford: COVID relief bill will force American taxpayers to fund abortion ‘for the first time’"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

During the debate over the latest COVID relief bill, Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Senator Steve Daines (R-Mont.)\u00a0proposed<\/a>\u00a0the addition of the Hyde Amendment<\/a>\u00a0to the bill. Though it had been included in all five previous COVID relief bills over the last year, it was missing from the most recent bill, known as the American Rescue Plan<\/a>. The Hyde Amendment has received bipartisan support for more than four decades and ensures that federal taxpayer dollars are not used to fund abortions in the United States. Unfortunately, the spending bill passed without<\/em> this protective measure.<\/p>\n

Lankford noted that the bill designates $390 million in administrative costs to carry out the American Rescue Plan and just $70 million<\/em> in grants to actually help relieve the financial crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and said that millions of Americans would be distressed to know that their tax dollars will be used to pay for abortions.<\/p>\n

“… [W]e have such a divide in this nation, where some people see every child as valuable and some people see only some children as valuable. Because we’ve had that divide that’s unresolved in our nation, we have \u2014\u00a0for decades, in every appropriations bill \u2014 had the Hyde Amendment that did not force Americans to have to pay for abortion procedures for the death of children. We’ve also had that in all five COVID bills that we have agreed together on in the last 12 months. This partisan bill, mysteriously the Hyde Amendment’s disappeared, and suddenly now, for the first time<\/em><\/strong>, Americans who profoundly believe that children are of great value and should be protected will be compelled with their tax dollars to pay for the destruction of life.” (Emphasis added)<\/p>\n

\u00a0