The Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal taxpayer funding of most abortions, is the latest target of abortion proponents. Big Abortion understands that when abortion is subsidized by the taxpayer, abortions increase. This has been seen in various states where taxpayers have funded abortions through Medicaid. The federal Hyde Amendment is credited with saving millions of lives — millions of people who otherwise would have been aborted on the taxpayer’s dime.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision unleashed various changes in the abortion landscape. Abortion facilities located in states protecting preborn lives relocated to states attempting to become abortion havens — states like Illinois, New York, New Mexico and others. This could lead to an over-saturation of abortion businesses vying for the same business.
But, if abortion were to be completely taxpayer-funded, this would increase potential clients in these states. Coercively “free” abortions aren’t really free at all; the rest of society would be paying to end the lives of those most vulnerable and most disadvantaged. This is not “reproductive justice.” It’s eugenic population control.
Getting Rid of the Hyde Amendment
The Hyde Amendment is a pro-life rider passed in 1976 which prevents federal dollars from funding most abortions. While eliminating Hyde was a goal of abortion proponents under Roe, the desire to end it has increased post-Dobbs.
A recent report published by FullerProject.org claimed, “Abortion fund leaders have… called for Democrats to support unrestricted access to abortion without viability and gestational limits and an immediate end to the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funds from being used on abortion care.”
A strategy for 2024 published by the pro-abortion National Women’s Law Center Action fund (NWLC) claims NWLC wants to “[m]ake sure our federal budgets fully fund reproductive health care, including birth control and abortion care, and eliminate the Hyde and Weldon amendments.”
A brief published by a litany of abortion providers under the name Abortion Justice Now called it “critical” that “any federal policy address both public funding and abortion access for young people.”
The president of Reproductive Freedom for All, formerly known as NARAL Pro-Choice America, has called for a “[f]ederal right to abortion” and to “eliminate the Hyde Amendment.”
We must pass a federal right to abortion—and that's just the beginning.
As @mintimm said, we must also defeat conservative lawmakers' extreme agenda on all fronts—this includes eliminating the Hyde Amendment. pic.twitter.com/XseL38KsB0
— Reproductive Freedom for All (@reproforall) April 2, 2024
A headline from “The Atlantic” read, “The Plan to Take Down Hyde,” and the article cited several sources that wanted Hyde gone.
“Harris has already set the stage,” Nourbese Flint, the president of the national abortion-rights advocacy group All* Above All, told The Atlantic. The outlet claimed that Kamala Harris has “signaled she’d do just that.”
Plan to Take Down Hyde Amendment (Image: The Atlantic)
Abortion historian Mary Ziegler stated, “There was a stronger focus on the intersection between reproductive rights and questions of racial justice and economic inequality. It’s also not a coincidence that the first presidential nominee to be vocal about repealing Hyde was the first woman” that the Democratic Party nominated for president.
Kamala Harris, just nominated to head the DNC Presidential ticket, has openly opposed Hyde.
“Eliminating the amendment would not override post-Dobbs abortion bans… But abortion advocacy groups would be able to redirect funds that now pay for abortions toward emergency travel expenses and similar initiatives. And Medicaid would no longer “treat abortion separate from every other kind of pregnancy-related care,” Madison Roberts, a senior legislative counsel who works on reproductive rights at the American Civil Liberties Union, told The Atlantic.
What the push to eliminate Hyde is really about
But abortion isn’t like “every other kind of pregnancy-related care.” It is killing. And promoting it is not about “racial justice and economic inequality.” Eugenicist and former Planned Parenthood president Dr. Alan Guttmacher (who actually initiated abortions within Planned Parenthood) once told a symposium: “There is no question that the most effective way of reducing population growth is by unlimited abortion” (emphasis added). Guttmacher’s aim was not the “empowerment” of women or aiding the poor.
And today, the true underlying aim is still not about reproductive justice, or freedom, or rights, or equality, or equity. It’s about population control, and it always has been.
Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger and her eugenicist cohorts were largely motivated by a desire to ensure that certain people groups did not reproduce. Sanger biographer Larry Lader stated in his book, “Abortion”: “We will only defeat ourselves by producing an endless cycle of unwanted children. Those born in slums, for example, denied even the smallest share of education and economic opportunity, have little chance of realizing their full potential as citizens.” Killing people certainly robs them of the chance to “realize their full potential.” But in reality, they saw such people as a drain on society.
It took some time, but these population control zealots introduced language such as “freedom” and “choice” to convince women that they couldn’t achieve success without the ability to kill their own children. It was never about “rights.” It was all a ruse, and women bought it.
Reproductive freedom means lift the abortion bans, fight for better maternal health outcomes, cover IVF through ALL insurance plans, and REPEAL HYDE 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/fc7OOjXbpT
— Tiara Mack (@MackDistrict6) August 20, 2024
A campaign of abortion advocates called Abortion Access Now not only vowed a “$100 million investment to advance abortion rights and access across the United States,” but is also vowing to “[e]nd the discriminatory Hyde Amendment and other bans on coverage that disproportionately affect low-income people, BIPOC communities, and young people.”
As seen in the above statement, Big Abortion, which is tethered to eugenics, often hides taxpayer-funded abortion under the guise of assisting poor women. In other words, in order to ‘solve the problem‘ of having limited means to take care of her child, Big Abortion wants that mother to “legally” murder her preborn child on the taxpayer’s dime. Let’s be honest: it costs less to kill a child by abortion than it does to financially support both mother and child for several years, and this discriminatory view is pervasive in society. Killing human beings is not a reasonable solution to any societal issue that we face, and human beings deserve to be treated with true dignity, not disdain and death.
Despite this, the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) 2024 party platform states, “We will repeal the Hyde Amendment…”
In years past, the Republican Party’s platform vowed to uphold Hyde, but the GOP did not reinstate this promise when it published its 2024 party platform just weeks ago, leaving some to question whether GOP lawmakers would allow Hyde to be removed — potentially forcing taxpayers to fund, to an even greater extent, the killing of innocent human beings.
