Trump wants permanent ban on taxpayer funded abortion, names SBA List president to pro-life coalition

In a new letter, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has called for “making the Hyde Amendment permanent law to protect taxpayers from having to pay for abortions.”

“Hillary Clinton not only supports abortion on-demand for any reason, but she’d take it a step further: she wants to force the taxpayers to pay for abortions by repealing the bi-partisan Hyde Amendment,” the letter says. “Hillary Clinton also supports abortion until an hour before birth. And she will only appoint Supreme Court justices who share this view.” Clinton has a 100% pro-abortion record, including support for late-term abortion and taxpayer funding for abortion and specifically Planned Parenthood.

The Hyde Amendment is an annual ban on elective abortion funding attached to appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Education, and Health & Human Services, which covers Medicaid spending. It is critical to saving preborn lives, as well as protecting Americans’ conscience rights against financially supporting abortion against their will. In 2009, 20 out of 24 studies reviewed by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute confirmed that restricting public funding for abortions also reduced abortions.

Even indirect subsidies for abortion, such as Planned Parenthood funding (which cannot directly go to abortions, but frees up money from Planned Parenthood’s private revenue sources to finance the procedures) correlates to dramatic increases in abortions, as the Susan B. Anthony List has explained:

From 2000 to 2013, taxpayer funding shunted to Planned Parenthood jumped from $202,000,000 in 2000 to $528,400,000 in 2013. In 2000, Planned Parenthood performed 197,070 abortions while making 2,486 adoption referrals. In 2013, they performed 327,653 abortions and made just 1,880 adoption referrals. That means a percent increase in taxpayer funding resulted in a 66 percent increase in the number of abortions and a 61 percent decrease in the number of adoption referrals.

However, although the Hyde Amendment is necessary, it is not sufficient. It does not apply to subsidies directly appropriated by Congress, or otherwise unconnected to those three departments (although other amendments such as the Helms, Smith, and Dornan Amendments exclude abortion from other spending areas), and it must be renewed every year.

Legislation such as the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act would be a permanent, independent law applying to all areas of federal spending, eliminating the need to repeat multiple votes every year or the danger that abortion funding could resume if future Congresses lacked the votes to renew the ban (of course, a legislative ban could be repealed, but it would not automatically end in the absence of a new vote, and repeal would require a president’s signature).

Trump’s letter also reiterates his pledge to appoint pro-life originalist judges to the Supreme Court, sign a 20-week abortion ban, and defunding Planned Parenthood. In addition, he announces his campaign’s new Pro-Life Coalition, led by Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser.

SBA-List says, “Co-chairs of the Pro-life Coalition will be announced later this month. National and state-level coalition members in key states will write op-eds, act as surrogates, recruit volunteers, and various other activities to support the Trump-Pence ticket.”

Trump, a former “very pro-choice” individual who changed his position in 2011, and currently opposes abortion except for rape, incest, or life-of-the-mother cases, says that Roe v. Wade should be overturned.

This week’s letter is the latest in a series of moves to reassure pro-lifers of his pro-life stance, which includes releasing a list of likely Supreme Court nominees that gained widespread praise from pro-life leaders, selecting pro-life Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his running mate, hiring pro-life policy expert John Mashburn as his Policy Director, and calling for the repeal of the 1954 Johnson Amendment that declares tax-exempt churches are “absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”