Biden's ‘Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force’ criticized by pro-life groups
Pro-life advocates are criticizing the Biden administration’s move to establish a “reproductive healthcare access task force" after 2021 was record year for pro-life legislation at the state level.
On Jan. 21, the day before the 49th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services launched the “HHS Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force.”
As noted in a fact sheet announcing the task force’s creation, the body “is composed of senior-level HHS officials who have been designated by their respective agencies to identify and coordinate activities across the Department to protect and bolster access to essential sexual and reproductive health care.”
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“The working group activities are focused on advancing quantity, access, and equity for reproductive health, rights, and justice,” the fact sheet reads. “[They] include coordinating federal interagency policymaking, program development, and outreach efforts to address barriers impacting individuals and communities seeking reproductive health care.”
According to the fact sheet, Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra “has directed each agency to prepare a plan outlining measurable actions the agency is considering or will take to protect and bolster access to sexual and reproductive health care.”
Actions cited as necessary to protect “reproductive healthcare” include “identifying and advancing policies that improve reproductive healthcare access within Federal programs and services” and “partnering with bilateral and multilateral partners to support evidence-based guidance and [policies] that bolster access to sexual and reproductive healthcare globally.”
The department attributed the need for a “Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force” to the coronavirus pandemic, the passage of a record number of pro-life laws at the state level in 2021 and the potential for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe this year.
“Patients have the right to make decisions about their own bodies. In light of restrictive laws across the nation, HHS will evaluate the impact on patients and our communities,” said Becerra. “Once again, we are telling health care providers and patients, we have your back.”
HHS Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, the first openly trans-identified federal official, predicted that the new task force will “improve reproductive health care access” and “eliminate health disparities.”
Levin added that the task force will work to “expand access to culturally competent health care services for underserved communities, including people of color, people with disabilities, young people, LGBTQI+ people, and others.”
HHS Assistant Secretary for Global Affairs Loyce Pace said that “advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights is central to our core global health goals.”
While abortion lobbying organizations and progressives celebrated the new task force, pro-life advocacy groups that push for laws limiting legal access to abortion do not share the enthusiasm.
Valerie Huber, who served as the former senior policy adviser for the Assistant Secretary for Health during the Trump administration and is now the president of the Institute for Women’s Health, contends that the task force “departs from the HHS mission.”
“[The mission] aims domestically ‘to enhance the health and well-being of all Americans,’ and internationally to ‘protect and promote health worldwide,’” Huber said in a statement released Thursday.
***PRESS RELEASE*** Biden administration launches “HHS Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force” to expand abortion at home, abroad. pic.twitter.com/WqC19jxjuy
— The Institute for Women's Health (@IWH4women) February 3, 2022
“Divisive agendas such as the one pushed by this Task Force do not meet desperate health needs, but stalls them,” she added. “Secretary Becerra and Assistant Secretary Pace should be managing the COVID pandemic instead of using it as a means to push inherently divisive concepts at home and abroad.”
The Institute for Women’s Health called on the U.S. Congress to “ensure that HHS does not use the agency’s Reproductive Healthcare Access Task Force to advocate or implement policies that cross the legal line.”
The organization insists that “hard-earned American tax dollars should not be funding what amounts to an Abortion Access Task Force, especially when the majority of Americans are opposed to taxpayer funding of abortion at home and abroad.”
Katie Glenn, government affairs counsel at Americans United for Life, told the National Catholic Register that she believes the task force is an attempt to "get around state laws." At least 106 abortion restrictions were enacted across 19 states in 2021, according to the pro-abortion research organization Guttmacher Institute.
Although Democrats introduced the Women’s Health Protection Act, such a bill is unlikely to pass in the U.S. Senate. Additionally, with a conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, some believe that the nation's high court could strip away at the legal precedents in Roe when it rules on Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban this year.
“I think [administration officials] see this as the opportunity to get around the problem,” Glenn was quoted as saying. “This is a way to get around all of that political reality that even pro-choice people, by and large, support what the Biden administration and what Planned Parenthood would call ‘sweeping and overly broad and overly cumbersome health and safety regulations.'"
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said the new task force commemorates a "decision that led to the death of over 63 million babies through abortion."
"Biden & his administration have a disgusting disregard for life," the senator tweeted.
The White House released a fact sheet highlighting “the Biden administration’s commitment to global health” Wednesday. The document cited “advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights” as one of its actions to advance global health.
The White House specifically mentioned Biden “issuing a Presidential Memorandum on Protecting Women’s Health at Home and Abroad.” The memorandum revoked the expanded Mexico City Policy instituted under former President Donald Trump to prohibit U.S. tax dollars from being used by nongovernmental organizations that provide abortions or referrals for abortion.
The Biden administration has also directed agencies to resume funding to the United Nations Population Fund, which critics say promotes abortion globally.
“The Administration continues to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for all in the face of continued threats,” the White House emphasized. “As the largest bilateral donor to family planning, the United States also leads globally by advancing SRHR in multilateral fora and with bilateral partners. As we address the indirect impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on health systems and vulnerable populations, the United States has supported increased access to SRHR services, particularly in emergency contexts.”
The Institute for Women’s Health lamented the use of the term “sexual and reproductive health and rights” because it “wrongly asserts abortion as an international human right.” The advocacy group maintained that “when the Biden administration consistently conflates ‘women’s healthcare’ with ‘access to abortion,’ it leaves the gamut of life-saving health and human services for women under-researched, under-funded, and under-staffed.”
The Biden administration’s consistent promotion of abortion has not sat well with pro-life activists, with one pro-life leader suggesting that the president’s pro-abortion advocacy should have made him ineligible to speak at the annual National Prayer Breakfast Thursday.
Fr. Frank Pavone, the founder of Priests for Life, declared on Twitter Thursday that “I do not think Joe Biden should show up for today’s Nat’l Prayer Breakfast.”
I do not think Joe Biden should show up for today's Nat'l Prayer Breakfast.
— Fr. Frank Pavone (@frfrankpavone) February 3, 2022
It is an offense to #God to worship Him while advancing the direct killing of babies by #abortion.
"When you lift up your hands in prayer, I will not listen; your hands are filled with blood" (Is. 1:15)
“It is an offense to #God to worship Him while advancing the direct killing of babies by #abortion,” Pavone proclaimed. Biden, a professing Catholic, spoke at the breakfast, calling on members of the opposing political parties in the U.S. Congress to unite because “a house united can do anything.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
