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Mississippi Republican takes helm of Senate Pro-Life Caucus, promises to combat abortion industry’s ‘misinformation’
'I will lead the fight in the Senate to protect unborn children and their mothers from abortion, and to combat the misinformation and extreme agenda of the abortion industry,' Cindy Hyde-Smith pledged.
By Calvin Freiburger
WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi will be the latest chair of the Senate Pro-Life Caucus, assuming a leading role in GOP efforts to block the pro-abortion majority over the next two years in a narrowly divided Congress.
Hyde-Smith, who holds a 100% pro-life voting record, is taking over the position from the caucus’s founder, Republican Sen. Steve Daines of Montana. According to a press release by her office, her priorities will be blocking pro-abortion efforts by Democrats and the Biden administration, advancing policies to protect preborn children and help pregnant mothers choose life, and stopping taxpayer funding of abortion and the abortion industry as well as the trafficking of abortion pills.
“The success of Mississippi’s challenge to Roe v. Wade has changed the landscape of the pro-life movement by returning the power to the people and their elected representatives to protect life, something that requires us to renew and readjust how we work to advance our cause,” Hyde-Smith said. “As chairman of the Pro-Life Caucus, I will lead the fight in the Senate to protect unborn children and their mothers from abortion, and to combat the misinformation and extreme agenda of the abortion industry. It is an honor to continue the great work Senator Daines began in forming the Senate Pro-Life Caucus.”
The news comes in a Senate under razor-thin Democrat control, alongside a House of Representatives narrowly taken by Republicans last fall, for a Congress in which pro-lifers will have real but limited power.
With Joe Biden occupying the presidency for at least another two years, major standalone pro-life legislation cannot become law in the near future. By the same token, however, major pro-abortion bills should theoretically be unable to reach Biden’s desk.
The most fertile ground for federal pro-life progress until the next election is likely to be in the battles over must-pass spending legislation, where pro-lifers hope Republicans can force the inclusion of language blocking taxpayer dollars from various abortion-related purposes. House Republicans recently succeeded in getting Democrats to accept one concession, in the form of rescinding the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for the U.S. military.
On the other hand, eight Senate Republicans joined Democrats in December to pass a $1.7 trillion budget omnibus containing hundreds of millions of dollars that can be redirected to the abortion industry, indicating that Hyde-Smith and the Pro-Life Caucus will have their work cut out for them in preventing some GOP colleagues from crossing the aisle.
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