Save Hyde NOW!

As I was researching efforts by abortion advocates to overturn the Hyde Amendment, I came across the following letter addressed to Bill Clinton, written during the 1992 presidential campaign. (You won’t believe by whom.) Excerpts follow:

But you can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country. No, I’m not advocating some sort of mass extinction of these unfortunate people. Crime, drugs and disease are already doing that. The problem is that their numbers are not only replaced but increased by the birth of millions of babies to people who can’t afford to have babies.
 
There, I’ve said it. It’s what we all know is true, but we only whisper it, because as liberals who believe in individual rights, we view any program which might treat the disadvantaged differently as discriminatory, mean-spirited and… well… so Republican….
 
You will have to enlist the aid of sports and entertainment stars to counteract the propaganda spread by church officials seeking parishioners, generals seeking cannon fodder and businessmen seeking cheap labor that, throughout the ages, has convinced the poor that children are necessary to fulfillment as a person….
 
And the poor? Well, maybe if we didn’t have to spend so much on problems like low birth weight babies and trying to educate children who come to school hungry, we might have some money to help lift the ones already born, out of their plight….
 
We don’t need more cannon fodder. We don’t need more parishioners. We don’t need more cheap labor. We don’t need more poor babies….
 
P.S. I was co-counsel in Roe V. Wade, have sired zero children and one fetus, the abortion of which was recently recounted by my ex-wife in her book, A Question of Choice. (Grosset/Putnam, 1992) I had a vasectomy in 1969 and have never had one moment of regret.

Yes, you read that right: This Sanger-esque letter was by none other than the late Ron Weddington, former husband of Sarah Weddington, the young lawyer who successfully argued in support of legalizing abortion nationwide before the U.S. Supreme Court. Although divorced, the two continued to work together on abortion-related matters; at the time, they were planning to set up a nonprofit to license and distribute RU-486.

Abortion advocates in Congress are how trying to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of federal Medicaid dollars for most abortions. This movement has the full support of the Speaker of the House, who said on Thursday that doing so is “an issue of fairness and justice for poor women in our country.”

To that, we say: Justice and support means resources and support for mothers, too.

There, we’ve said it. And we’re not “whispering”; we’re shouting it out!

Rep. Chris Smith is working hard to make the Hyde Amendment permanent. Sens. Joe Manchin and Roger Wicker wrote a bipartisan letter opposing the amendment’s repeal. We should not be forced to underwrite abortion through our taxes.

Most important, eliminating the Hyde Amendment would effectively put additional pressure on poor women into aborting their precious children!!

You and I refuse to put a price tag on the life of a child. All children are equal and Forever Priceless, regardless of their parents’ economic status.

One FFL Board member put it this way:

“Paying for poor women to abort their children instead of giving them the resources and support they need to rise out of their poverty is a false solution that betrays both women AND their babies. Instead of eliminating poverty, it eliminates the poor. We need our representatives of both parties to support empowering choices for women in need.”

Please, call your U.S. representative, especially if s/he has supported Hyde in the past but may be wavering. Tell her or him: Poor women deserve better than abortion: Keep the Hyde Amendment!

Call the United States Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121, or find her or him online at www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative to send an email.

Then, let us know you did.

You can be the one to save their lives. Save Hyde. On behalf of the most vulnerable, thank you!

Serrin M. Foster
President
Feminists for Life of America
Editor-in-Chief
Women Deserve Better
& The American Feminist