Last week, pro-life federal legislators introduced a bill aimed at helping women and families. According to Fox News, the Unborn Child Support Act is an attempt to create a safety net for women following the fall of Roe v. Wade, and allow them to choose life with confidence.
Pro-life Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Sen. Kevin Cramer of (R-N.D.) and Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) introduced the bill, which would allow pregnant women to collect child support payments for the child they are carrying. Co-sponsors of the bill include Senators Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), James Lankford (R-Okl.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), and Steve Daines (R-Mont.).
“I hope good legislation, like the Unborn Child Support Act, gets more support now that the Dobbs decision encourages us to look more seriously at supporting mothers and their unborn children,” Hyde-Smith said.
The bill would amend the Social Security Act “to ensure that child support for unborn children is collected and distributed under the child support enforcement program.” Mothers would be able to request child support beginning from the month the child was conceived onward, but would not be required to do so. In addition, child support payments could be collected retroactively through the month of conception, including instances in which the paternity of the child is established after the child is born.
READ: US senators announce pro-life, pro-marriage, pro-family legislation
“Caring for the well-being of our children begins long before a baby is born,” Cramer said in a statement. “It begins at the first moment of life – conception – and fathers have obligations, financial and otherwise, during pregnancy. Mothers should be able to access child support payments as soon as she is supporting a child. Our bill makes this possible.”
Rubio said in a statement, “We should do everything we can to support American mothers and their children. This bill would allow expecting mothers to prepare and support their babies before they are born.”
Last month, pro-life Senators Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), and Steve Daines (R-Mt.) introduced a new version of the child allowance bill called the Family Security Act 2.0. This bill would support families beginning during pregnancy throughout childhood, would encourage parents to be married, and would give equal treatment to both working and stay-at-home parents. The cash benefit would be $350 a month for each young child and $250 a month for each school-aged child. The cost would be covered by the consolidation of existing federal spending.
“Today, even in blue states, women with unplanned pregnancies are feeling lost and confused. The lie that abortion is not only okay but normal and healthy is collapsing, but that doesn’t mean the challenges facing mothers and their children have disappeared,” Rubio wrote in an op-ed for Fox News. “We have an opportunity to meet those women where they are with compassion and grace and remind them that they have options other than abortion. And we have an obligation to expand those options even further — to ensure America is safe for both mothers and their babies.”
“Like” Live Action News on Facebook for more pro-life news and commentary!
