The first 100 days of the Biden-Harris administration have brought an unprecedented tsunami of anti-life extremism. Almost daily, there are fresh assaults not only on the unborn and their mothers, but on the foundations of America itself as pro-abortion Democrats hurry to push through their agenda before the 2022 midterm elections.
Even before his inauguration, President Joe Biden was working to fill his Cabinet with pro-abortion radicals such as Xavier Becerra and Shalanda Young. Becerra is known for suing pro-life nuns and pregnancy centers during his time as the attorney general of California, as well as prosecuting journalists who exposed Planned Parenthood’s role in trafficking baby body parts. As a congressman, he even voted against banning partial-birth abortion. Young, meanwhile, has characterized taxpayer-funded abortion as “economic and racial justice” — a fringe view in the United States, including among women and low-income voters.
From the start, the Biden-Harris administration has sought to pay back the abortion lobby that spent millions to elect it.
Two of Biden’s early executive orders force American taxpayers to bankroll the abortion industry — domestically and overseas. One repealed the Global Protect Life Rule (formerly the Mexico City policy, which had been expanded under Trump), while the other initiated the rollback of the domestic Protect Life Rule, which stopped tax dollars from being funneled to abortion businesses via the Title X program. The administration could barely contain its glee in undoing the pro-life work of the Trump-Pence administration, with Biden’s Health and Human Services announcing plans to cancel the Protect Life Rule on the same day HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra was confirmed.
In March, Biden signed the largest expansion of taxpayer-funded abortion since Obamacare. Unlike prior COVID-19 relief bills, the so-called “American Rescue Plan” broke with more than four decades of bipartisan consensus by failing to include Hyde Amendment protections. The Hyde family of pro-life policies (which includes the Weldon, Dornan, and Helms amendments, to name a few) has saved the lives of more than 2.4 million children in the U.S. Biden was once an ardent supporter of the Hyde Amendment himself, but today he has fully caved to extremists in his party.
A single week in April brought two more anti-life decrees. First, the Food and Drug Administration decided not to enforce safety regulations on mail-order abortion drugs. The abortion industry has long sought essentially to convert every post office into an abortion center — lowering overhead and increasing profits. Abortion drugs pose even greater risks to women than surgical abortion, including infection, severe bleeding, incomplete abortion, or even death.
Next, HHS announced it will resume funding for experiments using the bodies of abortion victims without limits. Trump-Pence administration policies had stopped National Institutes of Health intramural grants and required an ethics review for other proposals. These experiments are barbaric in themselves, but they also do a profound disservice to patients — diverting resources from superior, uncontroversial alternatives and holding out grandiose promises of cures that don’t pan out.
Pro-abortion Democrats can’t abide losing and don’t want a fair fight. There is no rule they won’t violate or rewrite in their desperation to hold onto power.
Biden’s commission to “study” ways to alter the Supreme Court is a prime example. Make no mistake: Court-packing is court-destroying. Within days, House and Senate Democrats gave away the endgame with their own legislation to stack the court with pro-abortion justices. Biden opened the door; Congress stampeded through it.
Similarly emboldened, congressional Democrats continue looking for ways to erode the legislative filibuster, create new states, remove the deadline to insert the pro-abortion Equal Rights Amendment in the Constitution, and more. Worst is their push for a sweeping federal takeover of elections in H.R. 1/S. 1, defeating efforts nationwide to prevent election fraud.
Defenders of life have this advantage: the Biden-Harris abortion agenda is deeply unpopular.
In 2019 after Democrats in New York expanded late-term abortion and Virginia’s governor endorsed infanticide, state lawmakers responded with their own tidal wave of pro-life laws. This year, the number of bills introduced since Jan. 1 is about 500. We gain ground under hostile conditions by going on offense in the states while educating voters and ensuring that extreme pro-abortion candidates pay a political price in 2022 and beyond.
There is no room for defeatism; we must engage. As difficult as it may be right now to envision, the standard set over the past four years can be our future once again.
Marjorie Dannenfelser is president of Susan B. Anthony List.
