The National Pro-life Religious Council (NPRC) is a group of pro-life organizations, most of which represent denominations or are based in churches. Anglicans for Life, the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Lutherans for Life, Presbyterians Protecting Life, Priests for Life (Roman Catholic), Taskforce of United Methodists on Abortion and Sexuality (or Lifewatch)—all belong to NPRC, which is headed up by Rev. Frank Pavone, the national director of Priests for Life. The Council joins its organizations’ various witnesses to the historic Christian witness on life and abortion, so that all might speak for life in one voice in the American public square. On July 19, NPRC released the following statement on the Hyde Amendment, which is in danger of being scrapped:

A STATEMENT OF THE NATIONAL PRO-LIFE RELIGIOUS COUNCIL REGARDING TAXPAYER FUNDING OF ABORTION

In these days the Biden Administration and the United States Congress have been making numerous decisions regarding how our hard-earned tax dollars will be used, and what government programs they will fund. These decisions are part of the normal working of the federal government to craft a budget and to finalize various appropriations bills.

What is not normal, however, is the extent to which the Biden Administration and Congressional Democrats have been funding abortion, both in the United States and around the world.
Through a series of executive and legislative actions, both the President and Congressional Committees have gone further than any President or Congress in our history to make sure that as many of your tax dollars and ours are used to fund the destruction of children and families by abortion.

For the first time in over four decades, the President’s federal budget proposal calls for direct taxpayer funding for elective abortions. It does this by eliminating the longstanding “Hyde Amendment,” which has saved some 2.4 million children’s lives by stipulating that Medicaid cannot pay for abortions. Even Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama allowed the Hyde Amendment to remain in the federal budget. Today’s Democratic Party platform, however, explicitly calls for its removal, and Democratic leaders are following through on that.

Moreover, numerous other longstanding specific federal provisions that protect our tax dollars from funding abortion have been removed. This includes the Smith Amendment, which eliminates abortion funding from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, the Dornan Amendment, which applies the Hyde Amendment to the District of Columbia, the Helms Amendment, which protects certain tax money from funding abortion overseas, and more. Democrats are even taking away provisions that protect those who object to funding abortion, or that withdraw US support for coercive population control programs. The Democrats, moreover, are attempting to remove the authority of future pro-life Presidents to implement the Mexico City Policy, which protects taxpayer money from funding abortion internationally.

As human beings committed to protecting children and their families, as Americans committed to our national founding principle of the right to life, and as Christians committed to defending the sanctity of human life, which is created in God’s image, we oppose, in the strongest possible terms, the actions of the current Administration and Congress to increase funding to the abortion industry. This is nothing less than a profound violation of human rights, a participation in the mass slaughter of human life, and a coercion of the American people in supporting actions that the overwhelming majority of Americans oppose. Such actions undermine an essential purpose of government (which is to protect the weakest among us), and further erode the trust that American citizens have in their leaders.

We call upon those who represent us in government to stop forcing their fellow citizens to pay for abortions. Furthermore, we call on our fellow citizens to inform themselves more fully on these matters and to make their opposition known, clearly and respectfully, to their elected officials at every level.

As ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we declare again the confidence our Founding Fathers placed in the Providence of Almighty God over this nation, and we entrust to him its future.

You are encouraged to read and study this life-affirming statement. Then contact your U.S. Representatives and Senators and urge them to preserve the Hyde Amendment. It’s also important that you encourage your friends, family members, and church members to do the same.