Democrats Push to Destroy Life-Saving Hyde Amendment

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
~Thomas Jefferson

The Democrat-majority House Appropriations Committee does the bidding of the increasingly extreme abortion agenda, breaking decades of bipartisan legislative protections in order to destroy the life-saving Hyde Amendment which has been passed as a budget “rider” for nearly 45 years. Hyde has saved approximately 2.5 million lives and continues to save over 60,000 lives annually. Further, Hyde protects women and children, minorities, lives with disabilities, and Americans’ First Amendment rights. 

Also omitted from the spending bill is the Weldon Amendment, which protects the conscience rights of medical providers, preventing pro-life healthcare organizations from being penalized and doctors, nurses, and other healthcare personnel from being forced to participate in abortions against their will and moral beliefs. Congressman Tom Cole rightly emphasized, “This is an essential right of every American and its removal is a danger to us all.”

Additionally, Democrats not only removed protections from Title X funding which prevent abortion clinics from illegally funneling taxpayer dollars to abortions but also eliminated funding for Sexual Risk Avoidance education, including abstinence, which protects children and decreases rates of “pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections, sexual initiation” and even teen drug use. Instead, Democrats fund dangerous Comprehensive Sexuality Education, largely led by Planned Parenthood and already in 31 states, which endangers children, promotes “high-risk sexual behaviors,” increases pregnancies, and has an approximately 90% failure rate for reducing sexual activity and unprotected sex.

Despite masquerading as women’s rights and healthcare, all of the Democrats’ egregious omissions from the appropriations bill actually serve just one goal— increasing profits from abortions — and violate rights and harm women and children to do so. The American Center for Law and Justice noted, 

“The abortion lobby in Washington, D.C., is demanding increasingly radical devotion to its cause. The effort to repeal the Hyde Amendment is just the latest evidence of how extreme the pro-abortion industry has become.” 

Despite claiming to support diversity, Democrat New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio claimed, “If you don’t support [Hyde’s] repeal, you shouldn’t be the Democratic nominee,” thus alienating pro-life Democrats like those in Louisiana, who have passed several bipartisan pro-life bills protecting women and children. Then-candidate Joe Biden consequently reversed his own support for the Hyde Amendment, succumbing to the demands of the increasingly radical Leftist abortion agenda, and abandoning principles he had rightly held for decades that “the Hyde Amendment does not prevent organizations in the U.S. that provide lifesaving healthcare services for women from receiving the federal funding they need.” 

President of National Right to Life, Carol Tobias rebuked the bill’s exclusions:

“The elimination of the Hyde Amendment by pro-abortion Democrats destroys unprecedented bipartisan support for a measure aimed at saving human lives. This is a campaign by pro-abortion Democrats to ensure that abortion is available on demand, for any reason, at any time, and paid for with taxpayer dollars.”

Hyde Amendment Supports Healthcare

Destroying the life-saving Hyde Amendment also fails to represent the will of overwhelming majorities of Americans, including approximately 40% of Democrats and nearly 90% of Republicans, who support Hyde and more abortion restrictions and safety regulations, and oppose taxpayer funding for abortions. Americans on all sides of the issue would rather their hard-earned taxpayer dollars help fund actual healthcare and other supportive programs. Counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, Denise Burke asserted, 

“The majority of Americans support the Hyde Amendment and believe that the abortion industry should not be funded by taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars. Government-compelled participation in abortion has no place in our country—an idea that has historically enjoyed bipartisan support. American taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to fund abortions or to subsidize the dangerous work of abortionists. Every innocent life deserves to be protected.”

Abortion activists falsely argue Hyde hinders women’s access to healthcare, but in truth, ethical health clinics vastly outnumber Planned Parenthood and provide more safe healthcare services, support and resources, including baby supplies, free parenting classes, and housing and financial aid even years after birth. Pro-life legislation and policies provide women with more safe options and support such as parental leave, tax benefits, child care, and prenatal child support. The increasingly radical abortion agenda seeks to destroy such provisions in order to continue exploiting women for growing profits. 

Abortion Agenda Aims for Profit…At All Costs

Former “special affiliate” of Planned Parenthood, the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute admitted reducing abortion funding reduces abortions and saves lives, while abortions subsidized by taxpayers increase abortions, and in turn, revenue, in spite of increased health risks and deaths. Former Planned Parenthood president Leana Wen confessed abortion is the “core mission.” 

The abortion giant actually decreases other services while increasing abortions, revenue, and funding. Despite deceptive claims that abortion makes up only 3% of its services, in truth, Planned Parenthood manipulates data to hide actual statistics that its clinics perform over 320,000 abortions annually, nearly 900 abortions every day— tragically killing a child in an abortion approximately every 90 seconds. 

The abortion behemoth also manipulates women into thinking abortion is their only ”choice.” Troublingly, over 80% of women are not properly informed about procedures, risks and options; and approximately 70% feel pressured or receive no counseling, and more than half feel rushed or uncertain about choosing abortion. Planned Parenthood even enables sexual abuse and trafficking of minors, and covers up injuries and deaths of women, as clinics often have rampant health and safety violations, are not equipped to treat emergencies, and provide no subsequent care for complications.

Abortion activists dismiss such harm to women and children sacrificed for profits. For example, abortion activists increasingly push the dangerous abortion pill regimen, despite its life-threatening risks, including even greater risk of death than surgical abortions. The abortion industry sells the risky drugs at six times the cost and is estimated to gross nearly $200 million annually in abortion pill sales, with Planned Parenthood alone profiting from approximately half of those sales. 

Abortion activists argue that the Hyde Amendment’s prevention of taxpayer-funded abortions forces women to seek unsafe abortions, but it is abortions such as dangerous do-it-yourself abortion drugs that endanger and harm women, including minors, and enable alarming rates of coercion. Abortion activists even repeal health and safety standards, but oppose pro-life laws which protect women and children.

Abortion activists also exploit the pandemic to justify destroying Hyde, but the abortion industry repealed safety regulations and expanded unsafe abortion access, driving costs down, thus debunking the “need” for taxpayer-subsidized abortions. Abolishing the Hyde Amendment only benefits the abortion industry’s profit margins, not the health and lives of women and children.

Hyde Amendment Protects Against Discrimination

Since Roe v. Wade, federal programs funneled money to abortionists. By 1976, Medicaid funded approximately 300,000 elective abortions annually, with the number escalating rapidly. Congressman Henry Hyde enacted the Amendment to prevent Medicaid funds from paying for abortion, and it has been adopted with bipartisan support every year since. 

The Hyde Amendment has also been affirmed by the United States Supreme Court’s ruling “it is a fairly staggering proposition that Americans should be forced to pay for abortions.” After the Court’s decision in 1980, Ruth Bader Ginsburg disturbingly admitted she was surprised by the ruling because she thought that when Roe had been decided “there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in the populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

Abortion activists falsely claim the Hyde Amendment discriminates against minorities. Democrat Senator Michael Bennet even argued Hyde is “federally sanctioned discrimination.” However, the exact opposite is true; repealing Hyde and allowing taxpayer-funded abortions would literally federally subsidize discrimination. It is the abortion industry led by abortion giants such as Planned Parenthood that target minorities and even accept donations specifically to kill minorities.

Sadly in fact, the abortion rate in the black community is nearly 3.5 times greater than that of whites and almost double the abortion rate of Hispanics. Wisely, black Civil Rights leaders consistently supported the Hyde Amendment, and early feminists and the women’s movement recognized the discriminatory and exploitative agenda and opposed abortion.

The Hyde Amendment reduces discriminatory abortions and protects minorities and low income women from being pushed into abortion as their only option for unplanned pregnancies. By contrast, abortion activists feign care for minorities and low income women, while pushing abortion as necessary. Elizabeth Warren claimed, “Repealing the Hyde Amendment is critical so that low-income women in particular have access to the reproductive care they need and deserve.”

It is blatant discrimination to claim women “need” to kill their children merely due to their income or race. Pregnancy centers provide women with the actual care they need, including more free safe health services and supportive resources, while Planned Parenthood fails to even provide prenatal care but exploits women for abortion profits. 

Further, abortion is used against the poor and minorities as discriminatory population control. CEO and president of the Guttmacher Institute Herminia Palacio admitted that 75% of women who have abortions in the United States are low income and “the majority are people of color.” Kamala Harris enabled her donor Planned Parenthood, burying journalists’ evidence that exposed Planned Parenthood’s illegal violations, including altering abortion procedures, endangering women, harvesting live babies, and performing partial birth abortions; yet ironically, Harris argued that Hyde victimizes “poor women.” However, it is the abortion industry that exploits low income women and discriminates against minorities and low income children by killing them, dating back to Planned Parenthood’s bigoted eugenic founding, when the organization forced sterilization of black people. 

Disturbingly, abortion activists echo eugenicists’ prejudiced justifications for discriminatory human rights abuses. A Planned Parenthood board member in the 1960s (during the same era when Democrats filibustered against Civil Rights) admitted, “We want the poor to stop breeding…It’s strictly a class point of view.” Founding member of National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL), Larry Lader, who was mentored by Planned Parenthood’s racist eugenicist founder Margaret Sanger, claimed “Puerto Ricans, Negroes, [and] other minority groups” need abortion the most. 

Just as abortion activists today want to force taxpayer funding of abortions, another founding member of NARAL and former Planned Parenthood president, eugenicist Alan Guttmacher suggested force could become necessary if “voluntary measures” of population control did not work. Guttmacher founded the American Association of Planned Parenthood Physicians (AAPPP) in 1963 as the education arm of Planned Parenthood, and similarly as Planned Parenthood deceptively renamed itself from the American Birth Control League to hide its eugenic aims, AAPPP became the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals.

In 1972, AAPPP president Donald Minkler stated that if “the restraint of population growth does not come about through voluntary means…involuntary methods will be used.” Population Council president Bernard Berelson alarmingly said if voluntary methods of birth control were not successful, it may become necessary for the government to put a “fertility control agent” in the water supplies of “urban” neighborhoods. 

Masquerading as “helping the woman, the family and the world,” Garret Hardin (another founding member of NARAL and Margaret Sanger Award recipient in 1980) said “in the case of over population,” women should be “required to have an abortion and sterilization” if they had multiple children. Hardin made the startling suggestion that such coercion could emulate China’s abusive and disastrous one-child policy, and limit tax credits for only the first two children in a family. Further, former Roe v. Wade attorney Ron Weddington suggested in 1992 that the government should use the abortion pill to “eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy, and poor.” 

In 1970, Guttmacher had suggested that the United Nations should “curb population,” not to be perceived as genocide. Leftist and globalist agendas still pursue eugenic aims via abortions internationally— alarmingly parallel to failed coercive population control policies and horrific atrocities committed against minorities, disabled, women and children by regimes such as China, including forced sterilizations and abortions, female infanticide, torture, rape and trafficking. 

The China-owned manufacturer of the abortion pill has a disturbing history, having also produced Holocaust gas, and is still funded by wealthy advocates of eugenics such as Bill Gates and George Soros. While the Hyde Amendment protects lives domestically, Democrats also repealed its international counterpart, the Mexico City Policy (despite the Supreme Court had previously upheld its reinstatement), which similarly prevents taxpayer funding of global organizations that enable forced abortions, prostitution, and trafficking.

Communications Director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, Christina Bennett warned,

“Repealing Hyde would lead to an increase of abortion within our community which already has high rates. Forcing taxpayers to fund elective abortions means low income women of color will be prey for an industry that has been found guilty of over-billing Medicaid, accepting racially motivated abortion donations, selling fetal remains, manipulating medical claims to increase financial gain as well as aiding sexual abusers… Hyde protects women from an industry that is actually rooted in racism with a documented eugenics philosophy, population control, and the unlawful targeting of the Black community.”

Abortion also kills tragically high percentages of children with disabilities, though not only should equality for all lives be protected, but fetal surgeries are also available to improve some conditions, perinatal healthcare provides treatments for even terminal children, and science shows abnormalities can even self-correct in utero. The Hyde Amendment allows exceptions for risks to the mother’s health, but even in such pregnancies, early delivery is safer, and both mother and baby can receive safe healthcare, further emphasizing the importance of protecting lives with potential anomalies.

Founder and president of Secular Pro-life Kelsey Hazzard held the Out of Hyding event, explaining the importance of continuing the Hyde Amendment “is life or death for millions of marginalized people.” While abortion activists evade Hyde’s protections by sending State taxpayer funds to the abortion industry, Hazzard urged pro-life advocates to “create State-level Constitutional amendments against taxpayer-funded abortion,” encourage State legislators to enact similar State bills, and collaborate with pro-life groups not only to defend Hyde but prepare other protective actions needed.

Hazzard rightly asserted,

“[The Hyde Amendment] may be the pro-life movement’s single greatest achievement…The Hyde Amendment matters both because it saves lives and because it sends a message about our national values. It says we don’t believe people are better off dead than poor. It says we don’t believe Medicaid kids should be targeted for destruction. And it says we won’t force people of conscience to be complicit in killing children in the womb just by paying their taxes.”