Rep. Smith: Hyde Has Saved Over 2 Million Lives: Make It Permanent, Apply It to Obamacare
"I would like to thank Speaker Ryan, Majority Leader McCarthy,
Forty years ago,
More than twenty peer reviewed studies show that more than two million people are alive today because of Hyde.
Two million people who would have been aborted instead survived because public funds were unavailable to effectuate their violent demise while their mothers benefitted from prenatal health care and support.
Two million survivors have had the opportunity to live and enjoy the first and most basic of all human rights--the right to life.
People are seeing the truth of who abortion destroys as today's proudly-shared first baby pictures are most often ultrasound imaging photos depicting the amazing miracle of the developing child in the womb.
Growing numbers of Americans are often shocked to learn that the methods of abortion include dismemberment of a child's fragile body including decapitation and the severing of arms and legs or the use of drugs like RU 486 that starve the child to death before forcibly expelling him or her from the safety of the womb.
Yet, the billion-dollar abortion industry continues to cleverly market the cheap sophistry of choice while going to extraordinary lengths to cover-up, ignore or trivialize the battered victim in the womb.
They believe, as do my pro-life colleagues and I, that we ought to love them both--mother and child--and not fund the destruction of children through abortion.
Lawmakers also need to hear the courageous voices of women who are "silent no more"--a rapidly expanding number of women who share the heartbreak and agony they have endured after procuring an abortion.
Yesterday
Which is precisely what we seek to accomplish with enactment of HR 7. It would:
* Make the Hyde Amendment and other current abortion funding prohibitions permanent and government wide. (Soon after enactment of Hyde in 1976, other abortion funding "riders" were enacted into law. In 1983, for example, I authored the ban on funding abortion in the Federal Employees Health Benefits program. Most must be legislatively renewed each year. Again, HR 7 makes the funding restrictions permanent.)
* Ensure that the Affordable Care Act, until repeal, conforms with the Hyde Amendment.
* Until a new plan year begins, the bill ensures full disclosure, transparency and the prominent display of the extent to which any health insurance plan on the exchange funds abortion.
History will note, however, that millions struggled to protect the battered unborn child and were willing to endure any sacrifice, or any smear, for the least of these.
The Hyde Amendment has saved at least two million lives--all of whom are precious and irreplaceable. It's time to make it permanent law."
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