The Hyde Amendment, a pro-life rider that prevents federal taxpayer dollars from funding most abortions, is in the crosshairs of the abortion lobby. Ironically, the abortion industry — which is historically saturated in racist eugenics by its own admissions — claims that because Hyde does not allow taxpayer money to fund poor women’s abortions (many of them minority women) for any and every reason, it is “racist.” The truth is the exact opposite. Hyde protects poor and minority women (and their children) from being pushed toward abortion as their best option for an unplanned pregnancy.
Today, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies held a hearing entitled, “The Impact on Women Seeking an Abortion but are Denied Because of an Inability to Pay,” where pro-abortion speakers outnumbered pro-lifers three to one. These included Jamila Perritt, President and CEO of Physicians for Reproductive Health. PRH’s stated mission includes advocating for abortion and abortion providers. PRH is funded by original investors of the abortion pill manufacturer, Danco — namely, the Packard Foundation and the Soros-funded Open Society Foundations. Also speaking at the hearing was Herminia Palacio, President and CEO of the Guttmacher Institute, a former “special affiliate” of Planned Parenthood founded by leading eugenicist Alan F. Guttmacher. According to Palacio, over “75% of the abortion patients in the United States are low income and the majority are people of color.”
Today, we know abortion disproportionately impacts the Black community. In 2018, the Black abortion rate was nearly 3.4 times higher than the white abortion rate (21.2 v. 6.3) and 1.9 times higher than the Hispanic abortion rate (21.2 v 10.9).
Several additional claims and assumptions were made in the hearing, which are addressed below.
False claim #1: Low-income women cannot afford abortions; therefore, the taxpayer should be forced to fund them.
“On average an abortion at 10 weeks costs around $550, which could be somebody’s rent payment and increases over time,” the Guttmacher president told the committee.
Despite the abortion lobby’s attempts to claim poor women need the public to pay for their abortions, they know full well statistics show that when abortion is subsidized by taxpayers, abortions increase. This means the abortion industry stands to gain financially should its friends in Congress succeed in doing away with Hyde. A survey published by Guttmacher in 2017 revealed that women who have taxpayer-funded abortions tend to have more abortions.
In addition, the cost of abortion is set by the abortion industry, which is not known for holding the highest standards nor avoiding financial conflicts of interest. If the industry claims the cost of abortion is too high for low-income women, perhaps those who sell and support abortion should dig into their profits to help rather than placing the burden on the backs of the taxpayers, who overwhelmingly oppose funding abortion.
If the abortion lobby is able to con the political class into doing away with Hyde, it will be a boon for them — not for low-income women. After all, the cost of abortion pills averages under $100, yet the abortion industry sells them to abortion clients at nearly six times the cost. The abortion industry is estimated to gross nearly $200 million annually in abortion pill sales — twice as much money as initially projected — with Planned Parenthood alone taking in approximately half of those sales.
False claim #2: The need for taxpayer funded abortion is urgent due to COVID-19.
A recently revised court decision by U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang enjoined the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) safety protocols (REMS) requiring an in-person visit to obtain the abortion pill. Chuang’s order means that women can now obtain the abortion pill from largely unregulated online websites as well as pharmacies without being seen in person by a health professional to evaluation gestational age, potential ectopic pregnancy, or any other health risk factors.
Due to Chuang’s order, abortion pill websites are popping up across the nation, undercutting the cost of abortion at brick-and-mortar facilities like Planned Parenthood and driving down the price of early abortion to less than $200.
False claim #3: The Hyde Amendment is racist.
According to Guttmacher’s president, “The Hyde Amendment is a racist policy.” She also cited the Turnaway Study — which has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked for years — in her speech to the committee.
It is utter hypocrisy for the abortion industry to claim any high road on the topic of racism. Industry leader Planned Parenthood has a long history of racism and eugenics, and finally admitted in 2020 that its founder Margaret Sanger was a racist white supremacist. Planned Parenthood corporate, along with at least 19 affiliates, also acknowledged a present-day problem of systemic racism within the organization.
Recently, Buzzfeed documented additional accusations of racism at the national office of NARAL, as well as other reproductive rights organizations such as the National Organization for Women (NOW). The Population Council, which brought the abortion pill into the US and set up the pill’s manufacturer, Danco Manufacturing, LLC, has also been accused of having a racist past.
Abortionist Daniel Grossman recently tweeted that “racism and white supremacy are deeply ingrained” within abortion organizations he directs. Grossman is heavily tied to the abortion industry, serving as Senior Advisor with Ibis Reproductive Health (see more here).
False claim #4: Minority women need bodily autonomy (abortion) due to past injustices.
It is true that there have been injustices inflicted upon poor women of color, including forced sterilizations. It is also true that many behind the injustices were heavily involved in eugenics and paved the way for abortion in the United States and abroad.
Today, advocates of forced sterilization and eugenics like Margaret Sanger are more well known but lesser known groups and individuals have been detailed at Live Action News here, here, and here. Another powerful resource on this history is the powerful documentary film Maafa21, clipped below:
While the abortion lobby claims poor women want and need abortion, there is a long history of suspicion among varying groups that abortion would be used against the poor and minorities as a means of population control. These suspicions have merit.
A 1969 New York Times article acknowledged many leaders sitting on Planned Parenthood’s board were in favor of coercive population control. The paper quoted a Planned Parenthood board member as saying, “What it all comes down to is that we want the poor to stop breeding while we retain our freedom to have large families. It’s strictly a class point of view.” (emphasis added)
Population Council president Bernard Berelson once published an article suggesting if voluntary methods of birth control were not successful, it may become necessary for the government to put a “fertility control agent” in the water supplies of “urban” neighborhoods.
While former Planned Parenthood president Alan F. Guttmacher advocated “voluntary measures” of control, compulsory measures were never ruled out. As he saw it, if “voluntary measures” did not work, force could become necessary. In 1970, Guttmacher suggested that the UN should be used to “curb population” so it would not be perceived as genocide.
In 1972, as president of the American Association of Planned Parenthood Physicians (AAPPP), Donald Minkler suggested the use of force. “We hope that the restraint of population growth can come about through voluntary means: but, if it does not, involuntary methods will be used,” Minkler stated. AAPPP, founded by Alan Guttmacher in 1963 as the education arm of Planned Parenthood, eventually morphed into the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals.
Under the guise of “helping the woman, the family and the world,” Garret Hardin, a founding member of NARAL, suggested women should be “required to have an abortion and sterilization” if they had multiple children.
The Los Angeles Times noted, “In the case of overpopulation, Hardin said, the coercion could take the form of China’s one-child law, or regulations offering tax credits only for the first two children in a family.” In 1980, Hardin received Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Award.
Lawrence Lader, dubbed the “Father of the Abortion Rights,” and a biographer and disciple of Margaret Sanger as well as a founding member of NARAL once suggested that “Puerto Ricans, Negroes, [and] other minority groups” were the groups who needed abortion the most.
More recently, Roe v. Wade attorney Ron Weddington suggested that the government use the abortion pill to ‘eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy, and poor.’
False claim #5: If you do not fund abortion with taxpayer dollars, poor women will have ‘back alley’ abortions.
This false claim about ‘back alley’ illegal abortion deaths gets recycled almost every time the abortion lobby wants to expand abortion. Live Action News has debunked the myth that thousands of women died when abortion was illegal.
The abortion lobby fights every reasonable abortion safety requirement, and neither politicians nor the media will hold the abortion industry to account for the women who die at the hands of legal abortion providers.
You can see a sample list of “safe and legal” abortion deaths at the end of the video below — the list goes on for several minutes. Watch:
Pro-abortion politicians including Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and newly-elected Appropriations Committee Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) have vowed to eliminate the Hyde Amendment despite the fact that the American public overwhelmingly oppose taxpayer-funded abortions. Biden previously supported Hyde before his presidential campaign, as the Susan B Anthony List noted in a press release this year.
THE TRUTH: Women need help, not abortions.
In 2019, the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) identified 2,700 pro-life pregnancy resource centers (PRCs) which provided nearly two million people in the United States with free services, for an estimated total value of services at over $266 million. The number of medical pregnancy centers or clinics in the U.S. also increased over 4,000%, from 50 in 1998 to 2,132 in 2019.
Today, these PRCs vastly outnumber the 1,587 abortion providers identified by Guttmacher in 2017. The great work of PRCs combined with additional pro-life efforts and legislative measures has led to a continued decline in abortions over the past decade.
“Repealing Hyde would lead to an increase of abortion within our community which already has high rates,” Christina Bennett, Communications Director of the Family Institute of Connecticut told the committee. She added:
Forcing taxpayers to fund elective abortions means low income women of color will be prey for an industry that has been found guilty of over-billing Medicaid, accepting racially motivated abortion donations, selling fetal remains, manipulating medical claims to increase financial gain as well as aiding sexual abusers… Hyde protects women from an industry that is actually rooted in racism with a documented eugenics philosophy, population control, and the unlawful targeting of the Black community.
Recent studies have shown that the Hyde Amendment has actually saved more than 2.4 million lives.
Watch the full hearing here.
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