(Oregon Right to Life) — Oregon Right to Life and over a hundred other pro-life organizations praised Republicans in the U.S. Congress and encouraged them to continue resisting Democrat efforts to federally fund abortion via subsidies through the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare. The letter comes as Republicans and Democrats have so far failed to reach an agreement on a bill to fund the government, leading to a now-weeks-long government shutdown.
Oregon Right to Life joined 104 other pro-life organizations – including National Right to Life, the American College of Pediatricians, Live Action, and the Ethics & Public Policy Center – in signing onto the October 22 joint letter led by Susan B. Anthony (SBA) Pro-Life America.
The letter was sent out today to congressional Republicans amid the ongoing budgetary impasse.
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“Democrats are refusing to fund the government unless Republicans agree to extend Biden’s COVID-era expanded subsidies,” the letter states. “We are grateful that Republicans continue to stand strong against Democrats’ demands for massive spending on a continuing resolution—specifically, funding for Obamacare subsidies that cover abortion plans.”
Tax credits available through Obamacare help cover health insurance premiums for eligible Americans. The credits were enhanced in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to an influx of enrollees, but they are set to expire at the end of the year.
“Obamacare forces taxpayers to subsidize insurance plans that pay for abortion on demand,” SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a Wednesday statement. “And under the guise of COVID relief, President Biden took it even further, massively expanding those subsidies and the flow of taxpayer dollars to abortion.
As Dannenfelser pointed out, healthcare plans that qualify for subsidies under Obamacare currently include those that cover abortions – even though the 1977 Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of federal taxpayer dollars to finance abortion.
“Obamacare was written to be self-appropriating from the Treasury rather than appropriated through the Labor, Health and Human Services spending bill, and therefore, Hyde does not apply—and has never applied—to it,” the October 22 letter notes.
Kelsey Pritchard, a policy expert for SBA Pro-Life America, said this avoidance of Hyde Amendment restrictions was intentional.
“Democrats wrote Obamacare intentionally this way, specifically to avoid the Hyde Amendment, so that they could squeeze in abortion coverage in these plans and make sure that taxpayer dollars were propping these plans up,” Pritchard previously told The Washington Examiner.
“Extending these subsidies without the Hyde Amendment is a vote to expand abortion on demand, and every such vote will be scored by SBA Pro-Life America. The more Washington funds abortion, the more unborn children lose their lives, and the more moms are hurt. This pro-life Congress must not extend the Obama-Biden legacy of taxpayer-funded abortion that ends the lives of countless innocent babies.”
Pro-life advocates have noted that the extension of any of these Obamacare subsidies would mean federal dollars would continue to be used to fund elective abortions unless specific action is taken.
“Any funding for Obamacare… whether through cost-sharing reductions or premium tax credits, is forced taxpayer funding of abortion – unless such funds are definitively limited to coverage that excludes elective abortion,” Oregon Right to Life and the other signatories of the October letter said. “This pro-life Congress must not further extend Obama and Biden’s legacy of taxpayer-funded subsidies that end the lives of countless unborn children.”
Whether or not the federal government will extend these tax credits has become one of the sticking points in the federal funding stalemate that has shut down the government for the past three weeks, with Democrats pushing to include an extension in a federal funding bill.
Meanwhile, the concerns about ongoing federal funding for abortion comes after Congress passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill” in July, officially approving a provision cutting taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood for a year.
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As Oregon Right to Life previously reported, the defunding of Planned Parenthood is anticipated to lead to the shuttering of roughly 200 abortion facilities in 24 states nationwide – most of them in states where abortion is presently legal. The change will compound the existing number of abortion facilities that have been rapidly closing their doors in recent years.
The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute reported that the number of brick-and-mortar abortion facilities dropped by 5% between 2020 and March 2024. That decline has been partially caused by state pro-life laws passed after the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
That number continues to increase. This year alone, approximately 41 abortion facilities have either closed or announced their imminent closure.
