House Republicans are staking their tiny majority on abortion in what they clearly believe is a secret, low-key way. They’re not giving up on a national abortion ban, which they began plotting the minute Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked to the press in May 2022. However, the rousing success of abortion rights initiatives and measures on the midterm ballot dampened their plans a bit. So instead of making the issue the centerpiece of their agenda heading into the critical 2024 election, they’re sneaking abortion restrictions and bans into every appropriations bill they can, laying the groundwork for that national ban if Republicans should prevail in the Senate and White House.
They already succeeded in jeopardizing national security by forcing an anti-abortion poison pill into the defense authorization bill, a provision that is bitterly opposed by the Senate majority and President Joe Biden. Now the House extremists are pushing that fight (alongside trans care and contraception) using poison pills in each of the appropriations bills, including extremely convoluted funding restrictions and bans.
The agriculture appropriations bill, for example, also includes funding for the Food and Drug Administration. The Republicans have attached a poison pill rider in the committee bill that would force the FDA to stop allowing abortion pills to be sent by mail. Proving how “pro-life” they are, the Republicans are using this bill to help Big Tobacco while they’re at it by trying to prevent the FDA from regulating how much nicotine can go in cigarettes. Those tobacco companies have to keep their customers hooked, after all.
The bill that would fund bank regulators, consumer protection agencies, the Internal Revenue Service, and the District of Columbia is chock-full of bans because it also funds government services. So all federal employees would be denied coverage of abortion and gender-affirming care, and the local D.C. government wouldn’t be able to fund abortion services. The Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services funding bill is really larded down with bans, including prohibiting states from using their own portion of Medicaid funds for abortion services.
The method behind the GOP’s abortion madness is to overwhelm the Senate by putting poison pills in everything. If the majority-Democrat Senate doesn’t go along with it, then the House nihilists are fine with forcing a government shutdown and keeping it going until the Senate and Biden cave. Putting the bans in every possible bill means they can maximize the disruption and likely succeed in at least some of their efforts. That puts them at least a few steps closer to the ultimate goal of a national ban.
That’s what the forced birther activist groups, financed by the Leonard Leo-orchestrated dark money juggernaut, are counting on. Their argument now is a convoluted one that says any federal government support of abortion is an attack on states’ rights—even the states where abortion is legal. Kristi Hamrick, the chief policy strategist with Students for Life, gave the tortuous game away to Politico.
“This goes to the core of our argument against people who say abortion should just be a state issue,” she said. “It’s already a federal issue. The federal government is already involved in abortion. So if you really believe it should be entirely up to states to decide, you should support these defunding measures.”
States’ rights don’t apply, you see, where abortion is concerned. Republicans can’t be seen baldly passing a national abortion ban right now, so they have to do it more subtly via the tedious and wonky government funding bills that people pay less attention to.
They’re propped up by the AstoTurf forced-birth groups like Students for Life and by increasingly violent on-the-ground activists, though the two sides tend to disavow one another in public. Some people within the extremist group Operation Save America, formerly known as Operation Rescue, believe that groups like Students for Life are “too soft” on the issue when talking about six-week or 15-week bans instead of insisting, like them, that a fertilized egg is a person. The more mainstream lobbying groups are then able to claim that their proposed restrictions are the moderate position. It’s a game that’s worked for them so far: Abortion rights are now extinct in many parts of the country,
The anti-choice activists won’t rest until that’s true for the nation, and that’s the game they’re now playing with the help of House Republicans. All of these poison pill amendments are a means of softening the ground for what comes next from Congress. If Republicans keep the House and get the Senate, then get the trifecta by winning the White House, that national ban will be job one.
That is where Republicans are playing with electoral fire. By injecting abortion into every single funding bill, they’re going to make the shutdown fight about our reproductive rights and their push for a de facto national abortion ban. Republicans won’t be able to put the gloss of the deficit or “out-of-control spending” on a shutdown. It will be all about abortion. Government shutdowns are never popular, but when the issue threatens a fundamental right, it will be disastrous for Republicans.
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Joan McCarter
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