Thursday, October 1, 2026 · Independent editorial

Hyde at fifty

The Hyde Amendment turned 50. It keeps federal Medicaid dollars off most abortions. Democrats are already talking about killing it and putting taxpayer-funded abortion back in the budget. Katherine Hamilton’s Breitbart report is the source. Fifty years of that limit is not an accident.

Breitbart reports that the federal provision barring taxpayer-funded abortions turned fifty years old on Wednesday — a measure Democrats are plotting to destroy if they end up in power again. The Hyde Amendment was introduced by Rep. Henry Hyde and passed in 1976 after Roe and it must be renewed every year in the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriations bill that funds Medicare and Medicaid. It prohibits federal funds from paying for abortions or from funding health insurance plans that cover abortion with exceptions for rape incest or to save the life of the mother. The Charlotte Lozier Institute estimates Hyde has saved about 2.7 million lives since it began while twenty-one state Medicaid programs still cover elective abortions and thereby circumvent Hyde’s impact in those states. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser said for fifty years Hyde has stood for a simple principle that Americans should not be forced to pay for the destruction of unborn children’s lives with their tax dollars and that Hyde has saved more than 2.6 million unborn babies. She warned Democrats have abandoned that old bipartisan compromise and are pushing to repeal Hyde and force taxpayers to fund abortion nationwide and she pointed to Democrats’ eighty-four-page midterm agenda saying that if they take the majority eliminating Hyde would be among their priorities in their first hundred hours. Democrats tried to strip Hyde when they held the House Senate and presidency in 2020 and Republicans blocked it with the filibuster. Joe Biden long supported Hyde in the Senate then switched during his presidential campaign. The Progressive Caucus and Reproductive Freedom Caucus are pushing the EACH Act which would repeal Hyde permanently and force federal health coverage for abortions. A midterm is not mercy. A repeal memo is not Thou shalt not murder.

Being a Christian in America this week is refusing to confuse a midterm calendar with the command not to shed innocent blood and refusing to confuse an EACH Act press release with care for the woman or the child. Keep the unborn. Keep Hyde. And do not confuse a party memo with fifty years of saying Americans should not be forced to pay for abortion.

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