Biden's catechetical dementia on Hyde

President Biden's recently released budget request to Congress reveals the self-professed Catholic's catechetical dementia regarding the sanctity of human life.

Besides squandering our children's inheritance with a reality-detached spending spree, Biden's budget also kills several longstanding life-protecting provisions he previously supported, such as the Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of our taxpayer dollars for most elective abortions.

Passed every year since 1976 on a bipartisan basis and backed by a solid majority of Americans, Hyde provides that "None of the funds appropriated in this Act … shall be expended for any abortion." The amendment, long a demilitarized zone in the abortion war, provides for exceptions in the cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother.

Joe Biden's evolution from protecting to killing Hyde illustrates how a lifetime of moral compromise eventually darkens the mind and sears the soul.

A report published by the Charlotte Lozier Institute cites studies showing a rise in births among mothers on Medicaid since Hyde's enactment. The evidence leads experts to conclude that Hyde "routinely saves more than 60,000 lives in the United States every year" and that "the best research indicates that the Hyde Amendment has saved over two million unborn children."

Despite advancing abortion rights in blatant contradiction to Catholic teaching, Biden still insists that his Catholic faith is meaningful. Over the years, Biden seems to have assuaged what must be a nagging sense of hypocrisy by occasionally vocalizing abortion hesitancy.

In a 1974 Washingtonian interview, for example, he said, "I don’t like the [Roe v. Wade] Supreme Court decision on abortion. I think it went too far."

He added proudly, as if to brandish his moral courage, "I vote my own way and it is not always with the Democrats."

In his 2007 book, Promises to Keep, Biden maintained, "I've stuck to my middle-of-the-road position on abortion for more than 30 years. I still vote against partial birth abortion and federal funding…."

That was before the Democrat political equivalent of the Inquisition cleansed the party of virtually all pro-life heretics. The 2020 Democrat Party Platform forbids conscience and compromise, asserting that "every woman should be able to access … safe and legal abortion. We will repeal the Hyde Amendment, and protect and codify the right to reproductive freedom."

In 2019, with the presidential nomination that had so long eluded him hanging in the balance, Biden finally renounced his political apostasy and condemned Hyde.

He attempted to couch his election-year repentance in moral terms: "If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone’s ZIP code."

ZIP codes actually do have special significance regarding race and abortions, but the significance is the opposite of what Biden inferred.

According to a report by the minority-led Center for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE), "The prevalence of abortion facilities within minority communities serves as a major contributor to the rate in which black women obtain abortions."

A recent CDC study found that of all women in the United States, "black women had the highest abortion rate"—a rate that was "3.7 times higher … than for non-Hispanic white women."

Biden's opposition to Hyde based on his ZIP code rationale alleges that Hyde discriminates against minorities by blocking government subsidy of the abortions of black babies. Hyde, by contrast, has been shown to result in more black babies being born.

Yet somehow Hyde is racist?

Asserting that Hyde is racist because it prevents subsidizing the deaths of black babies is symptomatic of the 1984-style political rhetoric and the culture of death that is consuming America. Joe Biden has emerged from his basement as the newly ordained apostle of this dark and deceptive movement.

Having assumed that mantle by compromising clear moral principles, in the end Biden seems to have seared his own soul. All that remains is a hollow, soulless figure who no longer can distinguish evil from good, exploitation from empowerment or deception from truth.

Jonathan Imbody serves as federal policy analyst for the Christian Medical Association and directs Freedom2Care.org.