With Abortions and Rainbows for All
by John Murdock, First Things:
Should I have been surprised that ReproductiveRights.gov exists? Joe Biden has shifted from touting his long record of supporting the Hyde Amendment and opposing late-term abortions to making unfettered abortion rights the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. But the “dot gov” should still matter, and it does to me as a federal employee.
ReproductiveRights.gov offers resources for avoiding reproduction or snuffing out life in its early stages. The site includes multiple links to AbortionFinder.org, a non-governmental site funded by the likes of Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation.
Using tax dollars to drive traffic to abortion clinics would certainly seem to violate at least the spirit of the Hyde Amendment. Biden wrote decades ago, as a senator, “Those of us who are opposed to abortion should not be compelled to pay for them.” A lot of citizens do not want to pay to cheerlead for abortion, either. But the Biden administration has been evading the spirit of Hyde for some time now.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is responsible for ReproductiveRights.gov. When the predecessor to HHS had to first regulate under Hyde, President Jimmy Carter purposely selected Joseph Califano, a practicing Catholic, as the cabinet secretary in order to ensure that the law was actually enforced. President Biden selected Xavier Becerra—a nominal Catholic known for his strident abortion rights advocacy—as cabinet secretary seemingly to work around Hyde as much as possible.
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