Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate have introduced a bill that would strip all federal funding from colleges and universities if they perform abortions or provide abortion drugs to students and staff on campus.
Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mon.), who founded and chairs the Senate Pro-Life Caucus, on Wednesday announced the Protecting Life on College Campus Act of 2021 at a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol building. The House version of the bill was introduced by Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Mary Miller (R-Ill.).
The bill would also require institutions of higher education that host a health clinic to send an annual report to the Education and Health Departments, “certifying that no such site provides abortion drugs or abortions” to students and staff, otherwise they would lose eligibility for federal funding.
Daines criticized the California law, arguing that chemical abortions are dangerous and they target “very vulnerable young women.”
“We can’t let our campus clinics become abortion clinics,” he said at the Wednesday press conference, adding that “the craziness in California” could become mainstream in the United States if left unchallenged.
Daines was joined by Chip Roy, who called the legislation “the next logical step in our quest to protect life.”
“We shouldn’t be a country where we take women at their most vulnerable time, when they’re young, when they’ve gone off to college in this case we’re talking about, and essentially allow for there to be chemically induced abortion, for a do-it-yourself abortion,” Roy said. He also noted that the bill is consistent with Hyde Amendment that blocks federal funds from being used to pay for abortions.
