The White House has distanced itself from a key Democratic senator’s call to include a ban on federal money being used to fund most abortions in its massive, partisan social welfare and climate spending proposal.
President Joe Biden remained against the Hyde Amendment despite West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s insistence it be folded into the Democrats-only reconciliation bill, according to White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
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“The president opposes the Hyde Amendment. That has not changed,” she told reporters on Monday.
Manchin, an anti-abortion Democrat, said last week the $3.5 trillion package rolling out reforms such as universal pre-kindergarten and electric vehicle tax incentives was “dead on arrival” if it did not reintroduce a prohibition on Medicaid and other federal programs being used to pay for abortions unless in case of rape or incest. He reiterated that it was “a red line” on Monday.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal, whose group last week tanked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s plan to pass the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal independently of the reconciliation measure, said she was against the Hyde Amendment’s return.
“This is a negotiation, and we have got to continue to move this forward,” she said last weekend. “But the Hyde Amendment is something that the majority of the country does not support. One in 4 women have had an abortion and need to have reproductive care in a very, very important time when those protections are being rolled back.”
Biden long supported the Hyde Amendment but changed his position during the 2020 campaign under pressure from liberal Democrats.
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“Two years after Roe v. Wade was decided, Sen. Biden said this, and I quote: ‘I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far. I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body,'” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said of Biden last year when the two were running for the Democratic nomination.
