“This has been the fundamental protection for the unborn in the State-Foreign Operations bill for decades,” Appropriations Committee ranking member Kay Granger, R-Texas, said in introducing her amendment to reinsert the policy rider, known as the Helms amendment, which bans U.S. foreign aid from being used to pay for abortions. “It is why global health programs have achieved great bipartisan support and its removal jeopardizes that kind of support in the future.”
Lee, defending the first foreign aid bill written under her direction as the new chairwoman of the State-Foreign Operations subcommittee, adamantly resisted GOP efforts to reinsert the Helms provision.
“For too long, the Helms amendment has prevented millions of the most vulnerable people in the world from accessing the critical abortion care and from making the reproductive decisions that are best for themselves and their families,” the California Democrat said. “The Helms amendment is a direct impediment to reducing unsafe abortions and maternal deaths. Further, the Helms amendment actively discriminates against Black and brown women throughout the world who are the most seriously impacted by this policy.”
Granger’s amendment failed by a vote of 27-31 as did a related effort by Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, to reinsert a long-standing bill provision that bars funding to any organization determined to support policies that lead to coercive abortions or involuntary sterilization. That amendment also failed, 27-31.
Lee, a co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, is the first Democratic foreign aid cardinal to produce a bill that repeals the Helms amendment, which is named after its sponsor, Jesse Helms, the former Republican senator from North Carolina, and has been in every foreign aid bill since 1973. Helms died in 2008.
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July 02, 2021 at 05:45AM
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GOP anti-abortion riders in foreign aid bill fall short - Roll Call
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