Cory Booker: Opposing taxpayer-funded abortion ‘assaults’ African-American women
Since several high profile African-American pro-lifers recently spoke out against the eugenic nature of abortion, Cory Booker, a presidential hopeful, decided to take the opposite approach, arguing that to oppose taxpayer-funded abortion is to effectively attack African-American women.
In a speech given to the Democratic National Committee African-American Leadership Summit in Atlanta, Booker slammed the Hyde Amendment. “This assault on women’s reproductive rights is an assault on women, but it’s particularly assault on African American women,” he said as the crowd cheered. “And the Hyde Amendment to deny people through Medicaid and Medicare abortion rights, that is an assault on African American women, too.”
He also tweeted a video where he further defended his proposal. “He asked me if I was for the Hyde Amendment, which is for reproductive rights, restricting our ability to make investments in radical things like birth control and family planning,” he said. (Booker incorrectly attempts to link the Hyde Amendment with birth control, but it applies solely to abortion.) “Of course I would look to repeal the Hyde Amendment. But I would go a lot further than that. I would stop the assault on Roe v. Wade. I would want to see Roe v. Wade memorialized in constitutional law. I would want to fund Planned Parenthood. I would want to make sure that we have Supreme Court justices, Circuit Court justices, District Court justices, who will honor the precedent of Roe v. Wade, and make sure that we get back to being a society that trusts women to make their own health care decisions. It shouldn’t be made by a bunch of people in Washington.”
The Hyde Amendment is a threat to reproductive rights that punishes women and families who already struggle with access to adequate health care services.
The Hyde Amendment is a rider that has been added to every appropriations bill since 1976, and bans federal taxpayer funding of abortion. The Democratic Party made it an official party position to repeal Hyde in 2016, and most Democrats have jumped on board. Yet polls from Marist, Quinnipiac, and YouGov have all found that Americans support banning taxpayer funding of abortion (meaning they would support the Hyde Amendment), despite what Democrats like Booker may claim.
Live Action founder and president Lila Rose responded to Booker’s remarks with a statement to the Daily Caller, saying, “Instead of supporting pregnant minority women with financial support and care, Cory Booker and others want to finance the brutal destruction of their children with taxpayer funds.”
According to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, African American women get 28% of all abortions, despite making up just 12% of the overall population; Hispanic women, meanwhile, get 25% of abortions and likewise make up just 12% of the population.
In her testimony before Congress, African-American pro-life activist Christina Bennett spoke passionately about how she is happy to be alive. “It’s easy for people to say, ‘Well, I’m glad your mother had a choice,’ but a statement like that devalues my existence and the reality of what that choice would have done to me,” she said.
United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, meanwhile, wrote recently that abortion is becoming modern-day eugenics. “The use of abortion to achieve eugenic goals is not merely hypothetical,” he pointed out. “The foundations for legalizing abortion in America were laid during the early 20th-century birth control movement. That movement developed alongside the American eugenics movement. And significantly, Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger recognized the eugenic potential of her cause.”
Cory Booker, for his part, is extremely pro-abortion. He supports partial-birth abortion, opposes safety restrictions on abortion, and even voted against protecting abortion survivors. So the question becomes, is Booker’s rhetoric really because he’s concerned for minority women… or is it just an attempt to promote a pro-abortion agenda?
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