After Roe v. Wade was handed down in 1973, various federal health programs, including Medicaid, simply started paying for elective abortions. By 1976, the federal Medicaid program was paying for about 300,000 elective abortions annually, and the number was escalating rapidly.
That is why it was necessary for Congressman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) to offer, beginning in 1976, his limitation amendment to the annual Health and Human Services appropriations bill, to prohibit the use of funds that flow through that annual appropriations bill from being used for abortions. In a 1980 ruling (Harris v. McRae), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that the Hyde Amendment did not contradict Roe v. Wade.
In the years after the Hyde Amendment was attached to LHHS appropriations, the remaining appropriations bills, as well as other government programs, were brought into line with this life-saving policy.
The Hyde Amendment is widely recognized as having a significant impact on the number of abortions in the United States saving an estimated two million American lives.
National Right to Life believes that the Hyde Amendment has proven itself to be the greatest domestic abortion-reduction measure ever enacted by Congress. Additionally, a majority of Americans have consistently opposed taxpayer funding for abortion.
There is abundant empirical evidence that where government funding for abortion is not available under Medicaid or the state equivalent program, at least one-fourth of the Medicaid-eligible women carry their babies to term, who would otherwise procure federally-funded abortions. Some pro-abortion advocacy groups have claimed that the abortion-reduction effect is substantially greater–one-in-three, or even 50 percent.
1. Statement of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, “Effects of Sec. 209, Labor-HEW Appropriations Bill, H.R. 14232,” June 25, 1976.
2. The 1980 CQ Almanac reported, “With the Supreme Court reaffirming its decision [in Harris v. McRae, June 30, 1980] in September, HHS ordered an end to all Medicaid abortions except those allowed by the Hyde Amendment. The department, which once paid for some 300,000 abortions a year and had estimated the number would grow to 470,000 in 1980 . . .” In 1993, the Congressional Budget Office, evaluating a proposed bill to remove limits on abortion coverage from Medicaid and all other then-existing federal health programs, estimated that the result would be that “the federal government would probably fund between 325,000 to 675,000 abortions each year.” Letter from Robert D. Reischauer, director, Congressional Budget Office, to the Honorable Vic Fazio, July 19, 1993.
3. Michael J. New, Ph.D., Hyde @ 40 ANALYZING THE IMPACT OF THE HYDE AMENDMENT
4. McLaughlin & Associates, November 4, 2020
5. “Discriminatory Restrictions on Abortion Funding Threaten Women’s Health,” NARAL Pro-Choice America Foundation factsheet, January 1, 2010, citing Rachel K. Jones et al., Patterns in the Socioeconomic Characteristics of Women Obtaining Abortions in 2000-2001, Persp. on. Sexual & Reprod. Health 34 (2002).