Louisiana state Sen. Katrina Jackson: ‘It’s racist to fund abortions’

By Katie Yoder

Washington D.C., Oct 2, 2021 / 10:03 am

“It’s racist to fund abortions,” Katrina Jackson recently told EWTN Pro-Life Weekly, “because you’re going to have to cut the budget somewhere.” 

Jackson, a pro-life Democrat, spoke with the show in an episode that aired Sept. 30. She responded to the push by Democrats to repeal the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funding from going toward abortion with the exceptions of rape, incest, and to save the mother’s life. Established in 1976, Hyde has saved more than two million lives according to pro-life estimates. Today, it’s under threat by Democrats, many of whom call it racist. 

During a House vote in July, not a single Democrat supported Hyde.

“I was shocked,” Jackson remembered. “I was even more disappointed that some Democrats advocated that it was racist for us not to repeal the Hyde Amendment.” 

Jackson spoke from personal experience, she said.

“I sit in a room with African American women every day. 60% of my district is African American,” she emphasized. “I’ve never been in a group of African Americans who’ve asked me to fund abortion.”

Instead, she said, the African American community is “still screaming for equitable education and access to health care.”

The funding of abortion is racist, she stressed, because that funding will be taken from something else.

“At every level of government, in order to spend more money, unless more revenue comes in, you cut the budget somewhere,” she said. “In Louisiana, generally we have a deficit, we have to cut education and health care.”

This goes against what the African American community is actually asking for, she said. “What we’re screaming for right now in the African American community all over this country is, of course, things like health care, education, having a seat at the table, business, economic development,” she said.

She shared her message for President Biden, who reversed his decades-long support of the Hyde Amendment while preparing for the 2020 presidential election.

“I would tell him that those who voted for him and his base didn’t ask him to fund abortion,” she said. “He’s listening to a small segment of America, an extremely small segment of America who are asking him to do this. And he needs to listen to the voice collectively of a whole in America.”

Earlier this year, a Knights of Columbus-sponsored Marist poll found that nearly six in 10 (58%) Americans oppose using tax dollars to pay for abortion, including 31% of Democrats. 

Former Washington, D. C., correspondent Katie Yoder covered pro-life issues, the U.S. Catholic bishops, public policy, and Congress for Catholic News Agency. She previously worked for Townhall.com, National Review, and the Media Research Center.