No ‘Hyde-ing’ her intentions

Richard A. Sokerka

The Hyde Amend­ment is such important life-saving legislation that it has passed in Congress every year since 1976 as an attachment to spending bills with bipartisan support.

Named for the late Rep. Henry Hyde (D-IL), who sponsored the amend­­ment, it bars taxpayer funding of elective abortion.

A 2016 study by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the Susan B. Anthony List, estimated that the amendment has saved more than 2.4 million lives since 1976, a rate of more than 60,000 babies every year.

However, all those innocent lives in the womb who have been saved will be a memory for all those who feel life in the womb must be protected if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) has her way.

This politician, who claims Catholic roots, is not even waiting for the results of the November election to boldly proclaim that a prohibition on federal funding for abortion will be excluded from all spending bills next year, setting the stage to end the 44-year-old bipartisan agreement on abortion funding.

Pelosi’s brazen death sentence for more than 60,000 innocent lives in the womb using taxpayer funds should not be a shock to the pro-life community. After all, she is just blindly following the dictates of the Demo­cratic Party from top to bottom.

The 2020 Democratic Party platform calls for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment and presidential nominee Joe Biden, another politician with Catholic roots, is in lockstep with it after reversing his support for the Hyde Amendment last year because he faced criticism from abortion supporters, including his vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris, for supporting the policy.

The head of the U.S. bishops’ pro-life committee, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, lamented seeing “historically broad consensus” in support of the Hyde Amendment from members of both major political parties going by the wayside. “It’s very disappointing to see the extremism now that’s attacking what most Americans would consider a very important principle,” he said. “When you’re destroying a human life, this is not health care.”

All politicians, most especially those who profess to be Catholic, no matter party affiliation nor what its platform stands for, should take to heart the words of St. Mother Teresa, who said, “A nation that kills its children in the womb has lost its soul.”