We are urgently seeking 500 new Life Defenders (monthly supporters) before the end of October to help save babies from abortion 365 days a year. Your first gift as a Life Defender today will be DOUBLED. Click here to make your monthly commitment.
44 years of the Hyde Amendment amounts to millions of lives saved
The Hyde Amendment was passed for the first time 44 years ago today. Named for Illinois Congress Henry Hyde, who sponsored the legislation, the original Hyde Amendment was passed on September 30, 1976, and barred the use of taxpayer dollars from funding abortion. It has been added to every appropriations bill since then, and is estimated to have saved millions of lives.
A study released this summer by the Charlotte Lozier Institute found that at least 2.4 million lives have been saved by the Hyde Amendment, which prevents Medicaid and other federal government programs from paying for most abortions. Conversely, other studies and reports have found that when the government does fund abortions, the number of abortions increase.
Polling has also consistently shown that Americans oppose taxpayer funding for abortion, making the notion of overturning Hyde extremely unpopular. A 2020 Marist poll found that 60% of Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion in the United States, including 90% of Republicans, 55% of Independents, and 35% of Democrats. Similar polls have shown similar results, including those from Rasmussen and Quinnipiac.
Every day in America, more than 2,800 preborn babies lose their lives to abortion.
That number should break our hearts and move us to action.
Ending this tragedy requires daily commitment from people like you who refuse to stay silent.
Millions read Live Action News each month — imagine the impact if each of us took a stand for life 365 days a year.
Right now, we’re urgently seeking 500 new Life Defenders (monthly donors) to join us before the end of October. And thanks to a generous $250,000 matching grant, your first monthly gift will be DOUBLED to help save lives and build a culture that protects the preborn.
Will you become one of the 500 today? Click here now to become a Live Action Life Defender and have your first gift doubled.
Together, we can end abortion and create a future where every child is cherished and every mother is supported.
The Hyde Amendment has even been supported by Black civil rights leaders. “In times past, the Blacks couldn’t grow kids fast enough for their ‘masters’ to harvest,” Black social activist Erma Clardy Craven said in 1972. “Now that power is near, the ‘masters’ want us to call a moratorium on having babies. When looked at in context, the whole mess adds up to blatant genocide.”
Yet despite Americans’ overwhelming support for the Hyde Amendment, pro-abortion politicians continue to fight to overturn it. House leadership announced last month that the the Hyde Amendment will not be added to any funding bill next year. “It’s an issue of racial justice and it’s an issue of discrimination against low-income women, women of color, women who don’t have access to what middle- and upper-income women have in terms of the choice to have an abortion,” Rep. Barbara Lee said.
But pro-lifers believe this view about abortion access is backwards. “The millions of women and unborn children protected by the Hyde Amendment make it one of the greatest public policy success stories in American history,” State Senator Patricia Puertas Rucker, a member of the Susan B. Anthony List’s National Pro-Life Women’s Caucus, wrote in an 0p-ed for Townhall with the Charlotte Lozier Institute’s Dr. Michael New. “And since abortion takes a particularly heavy toll on minority groups, with Black women experiencing abortion at a rate four times that of white women, the lifesaving impact of Hyde is felt in an especially consequential way in communities of color.”
Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.
Contact editor@liveaction.org for questions, corrections, or if you are seeking permission to reprint any Live Action News content.
Guest Articles: To submit a guest article to Live Action News, email editor@liveaction.org with an attached Word document of 800-1000 words. Please also attach any photos relevant to your submission if applicable. If your submission is accepted for publication, you will be notified within three weeks. Guest articles are not compensated (see our Open License Agreement). Thank you for your interest in Live Action News!
Analysis
