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Biden budget overturns decades-old ban on federal funding for abortions

29 May 2021
Dan Ackermann

President Biden’s proposed 2022 budget lifts a decades-old ban on federal funding for most abortions.

The big picture: Presidential budgets rarely survive intact even with broad support within the party. Many Republicans and some Democrats will push to keep the amendment, named after the late Republican Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois. It became law in 1976 and has been renewed every year since.

But House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) has said this is one of her priorities.

Context: Biden campaigned on the promise of overturning the Hyde Amendment, which disproportionately impacts low-income women and many women of color who receive health coverage through government-sponsored plans like Medicaid.

  • Biden previously supported the amendment but reversed course in 2019. "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," the then-presidential candidate said.

What they're saying: “Today’s budget marks a historic step toward finally ending the coverage bans that have pushed abortion care out of reach and perpetuated inequality for decades,” Georgeanne Usova, senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement, The Hill reports.

  • “With abortion access under unprecedented attack around the country, lifting discriminatory barriers to care is a matter of racial and economic justice that cannot wait," she said, adding: "No one should be denied abortion care because of where they live, how much money they have, or how they get insurance.”

“Once a supporter of policies that protect the lives of the unborn and their mothers, President Biden today caters to the most extreme voices within his party," the anti-abortion group, the Susan B. Anthony List, said in a statement.

  • "The majority of Americans remain opposed to taxpayer-funded abortion," the statement continued. "We urge our congressional allies to be fearless in fighting to preserve the common-ground Hyde principle and to reject any budget that omits vital pro-life protections."

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.