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Another year, another Republican-led measure that forbids D.C. from spending its own money on abortions for low-income women.
The Post reports that as part of the annual spending bill for the city, Congress is again wading into local affairs by telling D.C. officials that no local dollars can go to abortion. The $667 million spending bill—which is set to be marked up today—also includes a prohibition on the use of federal funds on needle-exchange programs and medical marijuana, while renewing funding for a D.C. school voucher program that had been cut by President Obama.
Local funding of abortions has been restricted for years; Democrats lifted the ban in 2009, but the new Republican majority wasted no time in reimposing it in early 2011. Since then, local abortions have remained the focus of a number of fights between D.C. and Capitol Hill, so much so that in April 2011 Obama traded funding for D.C. abortions for a deal that spared a government shutdown.
More recently D.C. officials have been fighting a House bill that would ban abortions in D.C. after 20 weeks. Additionally, D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton announced yesterday that Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) said he plans to introduce legislation that would “require parental consent for minors to have an abortion, would prohibit non-medical doctors from performing abortions, and would allow doctors and health care institutions to refuse to provide abortions.” Like Franks’ bill, it would only apply to D.C.
“Republicans seem to be in copycat mode, trying to outdo one another in attacking women in this city and the city’s democratic right to govern itself,” said Norton in a statement. “They are undeterred by their professed small-government, federalist principles. Instead, they are wholly unprincipled in their mockery both of democracy and of their principles by confining their bills to D.C., the one jurisdiction that they continue to disempower without a vote, even on bills affecting only this district. Above all, the anti-choice, D.C.-only bills reveal a lack of courage to put forward the same abortion bills for the entire country. Neither Representative Amash or any other autocratic member of Congress will get a free pass when trying to bully the District with bills they dare not introduce for the nation.”
Ahead of today’s markup of D.C.’s funding bill, 100 organizations have submitted a letter to Congress asking that legislators not interfere in local affairs.
Martin Austermuhle