President Biden revealed in a recent interview that he supports the establishment of a federal fund to cover costs associated with abortion, including time off work, travel, and childcare.
Biden expressed support for the radical idea for the first time during a roundtable panel discussion with NowThis that was recorded on Tuesday and is slated to air over the weekend. The answer was delivered in response to a question from 26-year-old medical student, Danielle Mathisen, who pointed to growing commitments across the corporate world to support women procuring abortions and suggested the federal government should follow suit.
“The answer is absolutely,” Biden said: “I do support that, and I’ve publicly urged companies to do that. I’ve urged them publicly as president of the United States saying, ‘This is what you should be doing,’” Biden says in audio obtained by Axios.
The proposal to create a federal abortion fund seems to run afoul of the Hyde amendment, which prohibits federal funds from being spent on abortion. Biden openly supported the amendment throughout his decades-long career in the Senate, but has since abandoned it, choosing to omit the measure from his 2022 budget proposal.
Biden went on to urge corporations to fund employee abortions, insisting that corporate financial support is necessary to give poor women the “option” of aborting their unborn child.
“I urge you to do it because there’s so many, and imagine the women who need that kind of assistance, but have no money at all to be able to do this. None. How, how — what do they do? They don’t have the option,” Biden said.
As the midterms near, and the Democrats’ poll numbers continue to slump, Biden has made an intentional effort to ratchet up his rhetoric surrounding cultural issues, most prominently abortion. This Tuesday, Biden took the provocative step of claiming that a federal legislative effort to enshrine abortion would be his first order of business should the Democratic Party retain control of the House and expands its footprint in the Senate.
“Here is the promise I make to you and the American people, the first bill I’ll send to Congress is to codify Roe v. Wade,” Biden said during remarks at the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C.
The Supreme Court’s recent overturning of Roe v. Wade, Biden contended, “practically dared” women to turn out and vote. The rhetoric, however, does not appear to be moving the needle. Recent polling suggests that despite Biden’s efforts to court cultural issues, voters are still overwhelmingly worried about financial issues such as inflation.