In a 1974 interview with the Washingtonian, 31-year-old Senator Joe Biden quipped, in reference to Roe v. Wade, “when it comes to issues like abortion…I’m about as liberal as your grandmother. I don’t like the Supreme Court decision on abortion.” In 1974, Senator Biden was indeed about as “liberal” as my grandmother—in fact, he and my grandmother had a lot in common.
Like Senator Biden, my grandmother was from a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania. She demonstrated her pro-life values by choosing life for her six children, including one born when she was 46 years old. She, too, was a Democrat because she was dedicated to helping the poor, the vulnerable and those cast aside. Incidentally, my grandmother had a strong devotion to St. Joseph, the namesake of Senator Biden. She was a teacher married to a lawyer. Senator Biden—a lawyer married to a teacher. Both were Irish Catholics. Both faithfully carried, and I know at least my grandmother daily prayed, the rosary.
In 1974, the two seemed to be cut from the same cloth. Unfortunately, as Senator Joe Biden’s political career grew, and he became President Joe Biden, that changed.
During his first 100 days in office, President Biden issued an executive order that repealed the Trump administration’s Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Policy. This policy, more commonly known as the Mexico City Policy, prevented taxpayer dollars from funding abortions overseas. It had the support of over 75 percent of Americans. By repealing it, President Biden guaranteed that taxpayer dollars from Americans who believe abortion is the killing of an unborn child will be used to fund the practice abroad.
Virtually all of the candidates President Biden nominated for his Cabinet and other important administration positions are vigorously pro-abortion. These include Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra, who not only sued the Little Sisters of the Poor for failing to provide contraception to their employees, but also supports partial birth abortion; Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who vetoed partial birth abortion bans twice as governor of Michigan and thinks that pro-life measures are a “war on women“; and acting OMB director Shalanda Young, who believes eliminating the Hyde Amendment—which prevents taxpayer funding of abortion and is credited with saving over 2.4 million lives—would promote economic and racial justice.
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So it is not shocking that under the support and direction of the Biden administration, various agencies have enacted a radical pro-abortion agenda.
The Food and Drug Administration announced that for the remainder of the COVID-19 pandemic it will not enforce federal regulations that require in-person dispensing of chemical abortion pills. These regulations were put in place by the pro-abortion Clinton administration and kept—though weakened—by the pro-abortion Obama administration because they are an effort to prevent, or at least limit, life-threatening complications that can be caused by chemical abortion. Under the Biden administration, the FDA has chosen to protect the abortion industry’s profits instead of women’s lives.
As Biden promised throughout the 2020 presidential campaign, the Department of Health and Human Services has proposed rule changes that allow Title X recipients to refer for, and even perform, abortions. The decision ensures that Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business, will qualify for taxpayer dollars from the program.
Finally, under the Biden administration, the National Institutes of Health announced it will repeal a Trump administration policy that restricted taxpayer funding for research using the remains of aborted babies. This action will force American taxpayers to violate their consciences and fund such research rather than ethical alternatives.
Instead of protecting and defending life, President Biden’s actions during his administration’s first 100 days have attacked the unborn.
As Joe Biden became more powerful, his views on abortion became nothing like my grandmother’s. But—for all the unborn babies in danger of abortion who, due to President Biden’s first 100 days in office, may never have the chance to meet their grandmothers—I hope he becomes more like her.
Mary Szoch is Director of the Center for Life and Human Dignity at Family Research Council.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
