by Mary Margaret Olohan
President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have promised to undo a number of President Donald Trump’s pro-life policies.
Biden has indicated that he will reverse the Mexico City Policy, which bars foreign organizations receiving U.S. funding from providing abortions, abortion information or abortion referrals. He has also promised to restore federal funding to Planned Parenthood, to repeal the Hyde Amendment and to renew legal action against the Little Sisters of the Poor.
“If I am elected I will restore the Obama-Biden policy that existed before the [Supreme Court’s 2014] Hobby Lobby ruling: providing an exemption for houses of worship and an accommodation for nonprofit organizations with religious missions,” Biden said in July, when the Supreme Court ruled to uphold conscience exemptions from former President Barack Obama’s birth control mandate.
The Little Sisters of the Poor have emphasized that allowing an administrator to provide birth control to their employees still violates their religious beliefs since this would be causing the sisters to provide contraception to their employees merely through a third party, the Catholic News Agency reports.
Additionally, the president-elect has promised to codify Roe v. Wade.
Pro-life advocates have repeatedly praised President Donald Trump’s steps to protect the unborn throughout his administration. These advocates also warned that the Biden administration would be the most pro-abortion ticket in history.
“It’s certainly disheartening, but we aren’t going to give up, and we will do whatever we can to stop abortion from being promoted,” National Right to Life Committee President Carol Tobias told NBC News.
"Every human life is a gift to the world."
President Trump declares January 22, 2021 National Sanctity of Human Life Day. pic.twitter.com/u5nLSPezBJ
— March for Life (@March_for_Life) January 18, 2021
Pro-abortion activists look forward to the Biden administration as an opportunity to gain ground lost during the Trump administration.
“We have a ton of work to do to undo the harm over the last four years, but knowing we have champions there who understand what needs to happen in the first 100 days is tremendously exciting,” Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson told NBC.
Biden has taken a hard left stance on abortion access throughout his 2020 presidential campaign, though he formerly voted against a number of pro-choice laws as a senator. He told the Catholic Diocese Newspaper in March 1986 that “abortion is wrong from the moment of conception.”
Biden said as recently as 2006: “I do not view abortion as a choice and a right.”
Biden’s campaign confirmed to NBC on June 5, 2019, that though he supported Roe v. Wade, he still supported the Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of federal funding for abortions. The statement was met with strong backlash from pro-abortion groups, left-wing activists, and fellow candidates – including Harris.
Within 24 hours of reaffirming his support for Hyde, Biden announced on June 6 that he could “no longer support an amendment” that cuts off abortion funding.
Harris has been a consistent and strong pro-choice advocate for many years. She has a 100% voting record with the National Abortion Right’s Action League’s Congressional Record on Choice for every year that she has served in the Senate, and voted against both the Born Alive Survivors Protection Act and the Pain Capable Unborn Child Act.
Before she dropped out of the 2020 presidential race, Harris had announced a Medicare for All plan that promised to provide comprehensive reproductive health care and to establish a list of states that would be banned from imposing pro-life laws without the approval of the Department of Justice, Vox reported.
The Daily Caller News Foundation repeatedly asked the Biden campaign in November how far along into a pregnancy abortion should be permitted. The DCNF also pressed the Biden campaign to address President Donald Trump’s accusation that Biden supports abortion until birth.
Neither Biden nor Harris have clarified where they draw the line on abortion, and they did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.
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Mary Margaret Olohan is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
