https://issuesinsights.com/2019/06/07/c
The current frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for President, former Vice President Joe Biden, just reversed his position on the Hyde Amendment, which has prohibited federal funding for almost all abortions since it was first passed in 1976, then partially weakened in 1993 under Bill Clinton and a Democrat-controlled House and Senate.
But this is only one of an array of flip flops by Democrats in the top tier of the contest for the White House.
Biden had supported the Hyde Amendment since at least 1977, but now says “circumstances have changed. I’ve been working through the final details of my health care plan like others in this race and I’ve been struggling with the problems that Hyde now presents” as he seeks an expansion of Medicaid and enactment of the public option President Obama ultimately abandoned in the final version of ObamaCare.
“Folks, the times have changed,” Biden said – something he’s more or less also said regarding his unwelcome touching of women. The public turnaround comes after video surfaced of Biden telling an ACLU operative in South Carolina last month that he would support repeal of the Hyde Amendment, followed by his campaign sending out the mixed signal of claiming he continued to support Hyde.
As his support for legal abortion solidified during his climb to becoming more and more of a national figure, the Catholic former Delaware senator was forbidden from receiving Holy Communion by the bishop of his childhood hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Biden continued to receive when attending Mass in Delaware, however.
What is the price of a politician’s soul? As Shakespeare might have put it, “the campaign’s the thing wherein we’ll catch the conscience of the would-be President.”