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(70,182 posts) Wed Jun 26, 2019, 10:24 AM Jun 2019

Here's What You Need to Know About the Hyde Amendment and Efforts to End It

Analysis Law and Policy

Here’s What You Need to Know About the Hyde Amendment and Efforts to End It

https://rewire.news/article/2019/06/21/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-hyde-amendment-and-efforts-to-end-it/

Jun 21, 2019, 10:28am Ally Boguhn

After years of advocacy by women of color, eliminating Hyde now has unprecedented support among Democrats—including most 2020 White House contenders.

The Hyde Amendment bans federal funding for abortion except in cases of rape, incest, and life endangerment. Though it’s often discussed as if it’s permanent law, it is not. Hyde is what as known as a “rider,” or amendment, that must be renewed each year with the bills that appropriate—or approve—funds for the government to operate.

Hyde blocks the use of funds from Medicaid—the federal program that provides insurance to people with low incomes—to cover the costs of abortion care. Following years of concerted advocacy by women of color, eliminating Hyde now has unprecedented support among Democrats—including most 2020 White House contenders.

The Hyde Amendment was first passed in 1976. Three years after the U.S. Supreme Court made its landmark abortion rights decision in Roe v. Wade, Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) introduced the amendment as part of the 1977 Departments of Labor and Health, Education, and Welfare, Appropriation Act. It passed by a wide margin in the House—which was at the time held by Democrats.

Speaking about his intentions in 1977, Hyde said he wanted to stop all abortions but could only restrict access at the time through Medicaid. “I certainly would like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor woman,” he said. “Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the … Medicaid bill.”

Megan Donovan, senior policy manager at the Guttmacher Institute, told Rewire.News that Hyde was “clear in his intent to limit access to abortion and also clear that he understood that what he was doing effectively was targeting a program intended to provide access to health care for people with low incomes—targeting that population for this restriction because it was a mechanism that was available to him.”

The Hyde Amendment’s reach is far-ranging, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), because its annual reauthorization is attached to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ appropriation bill. It therefore covers Indian Health Service, Medicare, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Similar language has also “been incorporated into a range of other federal programs that provide or pay for health services to women including: the military’s TRICARE program, federal prisons, the Peace Corps, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program

[Photo: An illustration of a typewriter with a typed paper that reads
The anti-choice amendment blocks those who rely on Medicaid—the federal program providing insurance to those with low incomes—from using their insurance to cover abortion care. Following the efforts of women of color to end Hyde, doing away with the anti-choice policy now has unprecedented support among Democrats—including most 2020 White House contenders.