The 2020 Democratic front-runner opposes federal funding for the procedure, in stark contrast to his rivals.
Joe Biden has a subtle move he sometimes uses when speaking to voters—call it the “Catholic schoolboy play.” He might be accepting an award or speaking at a campaign event; maybe someone makes a joke, or yells something sexually suggestive. And then Biden crosses himself. It’s a small gesture, sometimes meant to be funny, sometimes earnest. But it’s a signal. Whatever accusations people may make about his nearly five-decade career in Washington or his penchant for uninvited back rubs, Biden wants everyone to know that he’s still Uncle Joe, the good Catholic boy from Scranton, Pennsylvania.
This strategy is one way to interpret Biden’s confirmation this morning, in response to questions from NBC News, that he still supports the Hyde Amendment, a decades-old ban on federal funding for most abortions through programs such as Medicaid. As a senator, Biden voted repeatedly to keep this ban in place; in the 1990s, as NBC reported, he wrote a letter to constituents affirming that Americans who oppose abortions should not have to pay for them. The other leading 2020 Democratic candidates have taken the opposite stance, calling for Hyde to be repealed, along with other expansions of abortion rights. Perhaps in response to the Democratic field’s move to the left, Biden has recently indicated that he might be willing to protect abortion rights with federal legislation.
While most voters likely do not recognize the term “Hyde Amendment,” the issue of using tax dollars to pay for abortion is fairly clear-cut. Even people who support legal abortion, including Democrats, may not believe the federal government should be paying for it. Biden’s continued support for a ban on federal funding for abortion sends a different message: This is the moderate Democrat who voters have known for decades. Abortion-rights advocacy groups are already calling out Biden’s position on Hyde, but unlike other 2020 Democrats, he is not prioritizing to those groups’ causes. In part by emphasizing his fight for “the soul of the nation,” as he has put it, over and above divisive social issues, Biden is making a bet that he can appeal to the widest range of voters in a 2020 general election.
