Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren delivered a scorching criticism of her fellow candidate in the 2020 election and former vice-president, Joe Biden, and his continued support for the Hyde amendment, a provision of federal law that restricts abortion access for poor and disabled women on public health insurance.
The Hyde amendment bars the federal government from paying for abortion care through Medicaid,the government program that provides health insurance to roughly 17 million US women of reproductive age. An abortion costs roughly $600 in the US.
In a TV interview with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, Warren said Biden’s position, like those of Republicans passing abortion bans in states across the country, would not stop abortion in America.
“Under the Hyde amendment, under every one of these efforts to try to chip away or push back or get rid of Roe v Wade, understand this, women of means will still have access to abortions,” said Warren, referring to the landmark US supreme court decision which legalized abortion across America.
“Who won’t will be poor women, working women, will be women who can’t afford to take off three days from work, will be very young women, will be women who’ve been raped, will be women who’ve been molested by someone in their own family,” she said.
“We do not pass laws that take away that freedom from the women who are most vulnerable.”
Biden, who is Catholic, has a mixed record on abortion rights. He said recently he supports a “woman’s right to choose”, even as he voted to restrict abortion access early in his career as a US senator.
Meanwhile, Cory Booker called the Hyde amendment “an assault on African American women” while speaking at the Democratic National Committee’s African American Leadership Summit in Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday.
The US senator and 2020 candidate pledged to create an office of reproductive rights, if he becomes president. It would protect access to birth control and abortion and “end the tragedy that America leads industrial nations in maternal mortality [and that] rates for black women are four times higher than white women”.
