Joe Manchin: Reconciliation Bill Cannot Support Taxpayer-Funded Abortion
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) added another caveat to his long list of caveats in his opposition to President Joe Biden’s massive reconciliation bill: It must include the Hyde Amendment, which bars taxpayer-funded abortions.
As noted by National Review, the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, over which Manchin has already expressed hesitancy, contains a “Medicaid-like” provision that excludes the Hyde Amendment. Since Medicaid is typically funded by appropriations bills that require 60 votes, the Democrats had hoped to use the reconciliation bill as an opportunity to override the Hyde Amendment. The Hill reported:
Some Democrats are pushing to include a Medicaid-like program in the reconciliation package in which the federal government would step in and provide coverage in the 12 GOP-led states that have so far declined to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.
The Democrats’ proposal does not include language reflecting the Hyde Amendment.
Democrats are trying to move a massive spending package that could include the Medicaid language through a process known as budget reconciliation, which prevents it from being filibustered. This means they could move the package through the Senate with no GOP votes, but they cannot afford a single Democratic defection.
Manchin told the outlet that the reconciliation bill would be “dead on arrival” if it did not include the Hyde Amendment.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) talks very briefly with reporters after walking out of the Senate Chamber at the U.S. Capitol on September 30, 2021, in Washington, DC. A moderate Democrat, Manchin has been negotiating with his fellow senators and the White House over the spending limits on the Build Back Better Act and whether he will put the budget reconciliation plan in jeopardy. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“We’re not taking the Hyde Amendment off. Hyde’s going to be on,” he said.
“It has to be. It has to be. That’s dead on arrival if that’s gone,” he added.
Government spending bills have included the Hyde Amendment since 1976, which President Joe Biden routinely supported until the 2020 election.
“I can’t justify leaving millions of women out of access to care they need and the ability to exercise their constitutionally protected right,” Biden said in 2019. “If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone’s ZIP code.”
Manchin told Bloomberg News this year that he would support the Hyde Amendment “in every way possible.”
Pope Francis Condemns Abortion as ‘Direct Killing’ of Unborn Children
ROME, Italy — Pope Francis underscored the inviolable right to life from conception to natural death in an address to the Pontifical Academy for Life Monday.
People have gotten used to abortion, the pope said in his address in the Vatican, because they fail to look at the reality and see “it is really a murder.”
Abortion consists in “the disposal of children that we do not want to accept,” he said, meaning they are “returned to sender by direct killing.”
“It is really a murder and to understand it well perhaps it helps us to ask a double question: is it right to eliminate, to take out a human life to solve a problem?” he asked. “Is it okay to hire a hitman to solve a problem?”
“This is abortion,” he said.
Hundreds of little plastic foetuses are displayed on a square in Houten, August 12, 2013. The Dutch Christian organisation Schreeuw om Leven (Scream for Life) has set up the action to protest against the establishment of a Centre for Birth Control, Abortion and Sexuality Rotterdam (CASA) in Houten. (Photo by ROBIN VAN LONKHUIJSEN/AFP via Getty Images)
It is important for the Church and the Academy for Life to “participate in common initiatives and, in appropriate ways, in the public debate,” Francis said.
“This naturally requires that, without ‘watering down’ the contents, we try to communicate them with a suitable language and understandable arguments in the current social context,” he added, to “help the men and women of today to rediscover as primary the right to life from conception to its natural end.”
Along with unborn children, the elderly are often treated as “waste material,” the pope lamented, sometimes through forms of “hidden euthanasia,” where important medicines are withheld because they are considered too expensive to waste on the elderly.
Also on Monday, Washington, D.C. Cardinal Wilton Gregory reiterated his position that he does not intend to withhold Holy Communion from pro-abortion Catholic politicians such as Joe Biden, insisting bishops are “not there as police, we’re there as pastors.”
Cardinal Wilton Gregory, shown speaking as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on June 19, 2003. Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI
The U.S. bishops remain sharply divided regarding how to deal with Catholics who publicly advocate for abortion rights.
Some have adopted the doctrine proposed by then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who together with Bishop Gregory insisted Communion should not be denied to Catholic politicians, even if they refuse to repent of their abortion advocacy.
In 2004, Bishop Gregory, who was then president of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference, announced the formation of a “Task Force on Catholic Bishops and Catholic Politicians” and named Cardinal McCarrick to lead the team.
In an speech delivered June 15, 2004, McCarrick told his brother bishops, “Based on the traditional practice of the Church and our consultation with members of our conference, other episcopal conferences, distinguished canonists and theologians, our Task Force does not advocate the denial of Communion for Catholic politicians or Catholic voters in these circumstances.”
In this March 4, 2015, file photo, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick speaks during a memorial service in South Bend, Ind. A 2006 letter from Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, a top Vatican official confirms that the Holy See received information in 2000 about the sexual misconduct of now-resigned U.S. Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, lending credibility to bombshell accusations of cover-up at the highest echelons of the Catholic Church (Robert Franklin/South Bend Tribune via AP, Pool, File)
That same summer, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — the future Pope Benedict XVI — wrote a letter to McCarrick and then-Bishop Gregory, noting that when a person consistently campaigns and votes for permissive abortion laws, his pastor should meet with him, “informing him that he is not to present himself for Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist.”
“When these precautionary measures have not had their effect or in which they were not possible, and the person in question, with obstinate persistence, still presents himself to receive the Holy Eucharist, the minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it,” Ratzinger wrote.
McCarrick and Gregory opted not to share the contents of Ratzinger’s letter with the other bishops, offering instead a misleading summary of its message.
“I would emphasize that Cardinal Ratzinger clearly leaves to us as teachers, pastors and leaders whether to pursue this path,” McCarrick told the bishops in regard to the denial of Communion to pro-abortion politicians, something that was manifestly absent from Ratzinger’s letter.
A challenge to Democrats' abortion-worship...from the left?
Terrisa Bukovinac identifies herself as a liberal feminist progressive member of the Democratic Party. She also proudly proclaims her atheism. But there's a catch to her leftist philosophy: she wants to "put the nail in the coffin of the abortion industry."
Terrisa is a daring "black swan" of the Democratic Party. She wants to be the leader of a new movement within the party that is 100% opposed to abortion with plans to put abortion providers out of business.
On Friday, October 1, Bukovinac will announce the name of a new pro-life organization that "will give space for left-leaning people who oppose abortion." Their mission will be to bring a halt to abortion, including closing down Planned Parenthood. She correctly points out that Planned Parenthood has been exploiting black women for years since its founding by Margaret Sanger. Thus, she argues that white supremacy and racism cannot end without the shuttering of Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers who focus primarily on non-white abortions.
Strategically, Bukovinac has timed the announcement of the new anti-abortion group to be made one day before the pro-abortion Women's March Network will hold a rally in Washington, D.C., titled the Rally for Abortion Justice. To gain further public attention, Bukovinac, in a recent interview with Fox News, stated that "I think President Biden is a traitor to our party. He's a traitor to human rights. He's completely untrustworthy on this issue" for reversing his longstanding support of the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding of some abortions.
It will be interesting to see how the captains of the abortion industry respond to this new threat from such an unexpected direction. Will the DNC tolerate such a group within its boundaries? How will Democrat party leaders like Pelosi, Schumer, Durbin, Leahy, Menendez, et al. respond? They have built their political careers and reputations cultivating the feminist vote by convincing women that the right to abortion is essential to their health and their constitutional right. The party leaders determined that this feminist vote was so essential for party survival that all members would have to pass a "pro-abortion litmus test." Will any of these politicians now turn their backs on their constituents and do a 180 to adopt the new Democratic pro-life philosophy?
Maybe Bukovinac is on to something bigger than she imagines. Maybe, undetected by leftist politicians, the vast majority of our population is over the idea that destruction of life in the womb is a good thing. Maybe many are realizing that abortion has contributed to racism and white supremacy. Maybe many think that it has led to more unhappiness than happiness in our culture. Maybe it will be Bukovinac's movement that finally brings an end to our country's deviant reliance on abortion to solve social problems. Maybe the pro-abortion legislation of the past five decades, like the laws passed following the Dred Scott decision that doubled down on slavery, will soon be found to be the worst laws ever written in our country's history.
God loves to surprise us with his solutions to human problems.
Image: Illinois Right to Life via YouTube.
