Trump orders Hyde Amendment's enforcement
The Hyde Amendment prevents federal money from paying for abortions. Medicaid recipients are the ones most harmed by this.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order to enforce the Hyde Amendment’s ban on using federal taxpayer money on abortions.
Here’s some history on the amendment. Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL) sponsored it, and it was passed in 1976 as a rider to the appropriations bill for what eventually became the Department of Health and Human Services. Hyde, who had been a trial attorney, persuaded his fellow congressmen to go along with it. Hyde, a conservative Catholic from a wealthy Chicago suburb, compared abortion to the Holocaust.
The Hyde Amendment prevented government funding and government insurance plans from covering abortion costs. Medicaid recipients couldn’t get an abortion paid for unless the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest or if the woman’s life was imperiled. Congress made it even more restrictive as time passed, and women couldn’t get coverage in those situations.
Trump’s executive order read:
For nearly five decades, the Congress has annually enacted the Hyde Amendment and similar laws that prevent Federal funding of elective abortion, reflecting a longstanding consensus that American taxpayers should not be forced to pay for that practice. However, the previous administration disregarded this established, commonsense policy by embedding forced taxpayer funding of elective abortions in a wide variety of Federal programs.
It is the policy of the United States, consistent with the Hyde Amendment, to end the forced use of Federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion.
Trump also revoked two executive orders issued by Joe Biden. One was Executive Order 14076, titled Protecting Access to Reproductive Health Services. It had directed the Department of Health and Human Services to expand access to contraceptives, request the Federal Trade Commission protect patients' reproductive health privacy, and directed the Department of Justice to organize a group of pro bono lawyers to defend women charged with having an abortion.
Another order he rescinded was Executive Order 14079, Securing Access to Reproductive and Other Healthcare Services. That had allowed Medicaid to pay for abortions in situations where a woman traveled to a state where the state had opted to submit its own money to pay for poor people’s reproductive care.
Under the Hyde Amendment, states can reimburse women even though federal dollars funding Medicaid won’t pay for the abortion. Seventeen states use state funds to pay for abortions for women with low incomes insured by Medicaid beyond the Hyde limitations.
Trump isn’t the only president who committed himself to the Hyde Amendment. Former president Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13535 in March 2010. It reinforced a commitment to the preservation of the Hyde Amendment's policy restricting federal funds for abortion within the context of recent health care legislation. Both antiabortion leaders and abortion rights leaders criticized him for the move.
Generally speaking, Democrats have been reluctant to fight on this issue. It’s much like parental consent in that regard. They think it’s a non-winner, so they ignore the women who are affected by the Hyde Amendment and teenagers who need an abortion, with or without their parent’s consent.