Photo by HiMyNameIsMarco.

In the third piece of legislation crafted this session, House Republicans have moved to prohibit the use of federal taxpayer dollars in funding abortions — and they’ve included the District’s locally-raised tax dollars in that prohibition.

Section 310 of H.R. 3, which is known as the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” and currently has 161 co-sponsors, states:

(1) Any reference to funds appropriated by Federal law shall be treated as including any amounts within the budget of the District of Columbia that have been approved by Act of Congress pursuant to section 446 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act (or any applicable successor Federal law).

(2) The term ‘Federal Government’ includes the government of the District of Columbia.

In non-legalese, that means that our local tax dollars — which have to go to Congress for final approval — are considered “federal” for the purposes of the prohibition. This is a restriction that Congress couldn’t easily make on any state, but given our status as the legislative body’s favorite colony, can be imposed on the District without any real consequences. Restrictions such as these had been in place before, but in late 2009, the Democratic Congress acted to lift them. The National Abortion Rights Action League has already condemned the proposal, calling it “an unfair restriction” that “would reimpose the ban on Washington, D.C.’s use of its own local funds for abortion for low-income women.”

It’s only been two weeks — anybody else already tired of these guys playing games with our local autonomy?