Xavier Becerra, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has had a long career of advocating against religious freedom and conscience rights in the name of “reproductive health.” Time and again, he has proven that his priority is ensuring that any woman who wants to get an abortion gets it, throughout all nine months of pregnancy, and at taxpayers’ expense. His testimony in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations earlier this month was just one more piece of evidence that when it comes to the unborn, the Secretary of HHS’s highest priority is abortion.
When Becerra was first nominated to the Cabinet position in 2021, Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee (CWALAC) sent a letter to the Senate, urging legislators to vote against his confirmation. In his previous job as California Attorney General, Becerra infamously sued the Little Sisters for the Poor, insisting that the religious order should be forced to provide contraceptives and abortifacients. In the Nifla v. Becerra case that bears his name, he argued that California should be allowed to mandate that pregnancy resource centers provide information to patients on how to obtain an abortion. (SCOTUS ultimately disagreed). And as a Congressman before that, he twice voted against a ban on partial birth abortion, a policy that the vast majority of Americans support.
This is just a small snapshot of Becerra’s egregious resume.
So when Sen. John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) pressed Becerra on the abortion issue in this month’s Appropriations hearing, it was appalling but not surprising that, when asked, he could not say that he supports any kind of restrictions on abortion.
The Senator opened his time by asking Becerra, “If the mother is healthy and the baby is healthy, do you really support abortion up to the moment of birth?”
After Becerra said that he nor anyone he knows supports that, Kennedy cited Becerra’s own words from 2020, when the then-Attorney General said that “no government, state or federal, has the right to make decisions for a woman about her body or her healthcare.”
Becerra then stated that he would support the reestablishment of Roe v. Wade. Roe v. Wade, egregious as that decision was, did allow for states to place some restrictions on third term abortions. Kennedy pointed to this, asking Becerra, “So you think there are restrictions that federal or state [governments] can place on abortion?”
Rather than answering yes or no, Becerra repeated his belief that Roe v. Wade was the right policy to pursue. Even when Kennedy asked if parents should have the right to abortion in cases where they “don’t like the gender of the baby,” Becerra could not answer “no.” Kennedy asked variations of the same question several times, whether or not the Secretary supported any kind of restrictions, and each time, Becerra dodged.
The question of abortion restrictions should not have been a difficult one. And as someone who has been advocating for abortion his entire career, it’s not an issue with which Becerra is unfamiliar. Yet, Becerra could not say that a single restriction on the procedure is acceptable.
Later in the hearing, Sen. Katie Britt (R-Alabama) continued to press the Secretary on the topic. She brought up the fact that there is no mention of the Hyde Amendment, the long-standing ban on taxpayer funding of abortions, in the 2025 HHS budget. So she asked Secretary Becerra to clarify that he believes that “tax dollars should go to pay for abortions.”
When he answered that President Biden requested that the Hyde Amendment be removed from the HHS budget, Sen. Britt took the issue even farther than Sen. Kennedy had. Britt described in graphic detail what a late-term abortion entails, what abortionists must do in order to kill the child and remove it from its mother’s womb. The purpose of the Hyde Amendment, she argued, is to protect taxpayers from funding this kind of barbarism.
Becerra’s refusal to give a clear answer was, in fact, an answer. His lack of moral courage and clarity was deafening. Under his leadership, the Department of Health and Human Services supports a culture of death, funded by taxpayers, rather than the wellbeing of the America populace. Thankfully, we have bold legislators like Sens. Kennedy and Britt willing to expose the Administration’s policies and show why we must continue to fight to protect life in the public arena. But we are in desperate need of a change in leadership if we want to see a day when every person is valued as created in the image of God.