The Hyde Amendment is estimated to have saved over 2.4 million lives since 1976 by blocking federal funds from being used to pay for abortions. Research from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute shows that public funding for abortion increases abortion rates and that nearly a quarter of abortion-minded women choose life when Medicaid funds are restricted from being used for abortion. The pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute published similar findings, indicating that by blocking federal funds from paying for abortions, the Hyde Amendment saves roughly 60,000 lives per year. This lifesaving amendment has received bipartisan support for decades, and polling data shows that 60% of American voters oppose taxpayer-funded abortions.

According to reports that emerged on Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who chairs the subcommittee that funds federal health programs, informed a group of lawmakers that they would not be adding the Hyde Amendment to any government funding bills next year. Speaker Pelosi hinted at this shift earlier this year when she tried to sidestep the Hyde Amendment in emergency economic stimulus packages, first in March and then again in May. Writing for National Review, John McCormack has pointed out that the Democrat party has purged most of their pro-life members, leaving very few Democrats in Congress who support the Hyde Amendment.

California Congresswoman Barbara Lee suggested that the Hyde Amendment unjustly discriminates against minority and low-income women. But the real injustice is that the abortion industry already targets minority and low-income communities in a manner that reflects the goals of Planned Parenthood’s eugenics-supporting founder. This attitude is also reflected in comments from pro-abortion Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a 2009 interview when she mentioned that she had been surprised when the Supreme Court upheld the Hyde Amendment in 1980, saying, “Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

Targeting unborn children for abortion because their parents are minorities or low-income is an appalling injustice. Repealing the Hyde Amendment would further enable the abortion industry to engage in this targeting, and would use taxpayer dollars to do so.

(Image: Flickr, Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0)