CV NEWS FEED // White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Thursday that the Biden administration is already working to make sure American taxpayer dollars subsidize the abortion industry.
She promised efforts that would guarantee carte-blanche funding of abortion through taxpayer-funded programs such as Medicaid.
“Just last week in an executive order, [Biden] reissued guidance specifying that states cannot refuse Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood and other [abortion] providers,” Psaki said, and Biden is “committed to protecting and strengthening the Medicaid program … consistent with the executive order….”
These comments came just a day after Psaki dismissed a reporter’s question about President Biden’s apparent unwillingness to reach out to pro-life Americans. This week, Texas fully ended taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood.
As that reporter pointed out, “President Biden has stated he wants to unite the country,” but in his first two weeks in office:
[He] has revoked the Mexico City Policy, he has ordered the review of Title X, and issued a statement strongly supporting Roe v. Wade. Is the president going to make any effort to reach out to pro-life Americans in his administration?
Catholic Responses
The question of whether Biden has any sympathy for the pro-life cause is one that some would argue he has answered in the negative with his actions on many occasions throughout his career.
At the beginning of his campaign in 2019, Biden did express support for the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal tax dollars from funding abortion.
But even that promise was short-lived. After only two days of pushback from abortion advocates, Biden reversed his position and denounced Hyde.
By August of 2020, even pro-life Democrats were raising alarms that they felt stonewalled.
Kristen Day of Democrats for Life suggested that the Biden campaign had abandoned any effort to win over pro-life voters at all.
In an op-ed at the Wall Street Journal, Day and a colleague also argued that “Joe Biden would be the most pro-abortion president in history.”
Although he was once a moderate, the Catholic former vice president now describes abortion as “essential health care,” caved in to the abortion industry on taxpayer funding, and has been proudly endorsed by Naral Pro-Choice America, an organization that advocates for the repeal of all regulations on abortion.
And the recent rhetoric of the administration would also seem to confirm many early reactions to Biden’s election from other pro-life Catholics.
On the day of Biden’s inauguration, Archbishop Jose Gomez protested that “our new President has pledged to pursue certain policies that would advance moral evils and threaten human life and dignity….”
Gomez, who serves as President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, went on to point to abortion as one of the issues that puts Biden “most seriously” at odds with the Catholic Church.
CatholicVote President Brian Burch echoed Gomez, calling Biden a “Catholic president … who supports killing unborn children,” and a “national scandal to our Church.”
“The Biden presidency is an open challenge to those bishops who take seriously their role of defending the Faith and teaching the Truth,” Burch said. “They will be tested. Please pray for them.”