Today, the Subcommittee on Labor, Health, and Human Services, Education, and Related Services of the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations held “The Impact on Women Seeking an Abortion but are Denied Because of an Inability to Pay,” a hearing on the significant record of health and socioeconomic harms inflicted on citizens as a result of the Hyde Amendment.
Women’s Law Project proudly joined a letter signed by more than 150 organizations calling on President-Elect Joe Biden to eliminate the Hyde Amendment.
We thank Dr. Herminia Palacio of the Guttmacher Institute, Dr. Jamila Perritt of Physicians for Reproductive Health, and Amanda Beatriz Williams of the Lilith Fund for sharing their insight and expertise on the harmful effects of political interference into reproductive healthcare and how the Hyde Amendment perpetuates the legacy of racism in U.S. healthcare.
What is the Hyde Amendment?
Congress enacted the Hyde Amendment in response to Roe v. Wade. It blocks federal funds from covering abortion care with narrow exceptions for rape, incest, and to avoid the death of the pregnant person.
In addition to blocking federal funds from supporting abortion coverage in Medicaid, the Hyde Amendment has been expanded to prohibit abortion care coverage in other federal programs including under the Indian Health Service, Medicare, CHIP, the military’s TRICARE program, federal prisons, the Peace Corps & federal employee benefits.
Congressman Henry Hyde, who earned a salary the modern-day equivalent of $179,839 plus benefits the year he proposed his notorious amendment, was explicit that the goal of the Hyde Amendment is to deprive low-income people of their constitutional right to abortion:
“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. Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the Medicaid bill.”
The Hyde Amendment is not permanently codified into law and has been annually re-passed in Appropriations every year since 1976. It is not surprising that a policy passed with explicit discriminatory intent has disproportionate harm on Black women, people of color, and low-income people.
Roe is important. But we know the legal right to abortion care is the floor, not the ceiling, to advance the goal of equitable access to abortion care. For too many people in the United States, and especially those more likely to be low-income due to the legacy of racism or disenfranchised due to LGBTQ discrimination, financial bans such as the Hyde Amendment block access to abortion altogether.
Research shows one in four women seeking abortion care who cannot overcome the lack of Medicaid funding will be forced into carrying her pregnancy against their will.
Challenging Pennsylvania’s Discriminatory Ban on Medicaid Coverage of Abortion Care
States retain the right to cover the full range of evidence-based reproductive healthcare for their residents. Unfortunately, 33 states including Pennsylvania have installed state bans, amplifying Hyde’s harm.
Pennsylvania’s ban on Medicaid coverage of abortion care introduced in 1982 and went into effect in 1985.
As discussed in today’s hearing, while maternal mortality is the most severe consequence of the Hyde Amendment, people denied abortion care based on their income and geography suffer a spectrum of harm. They are more likely to be pushed into poverty, less likely to have money for necessities such as food, face more health problems than people who access abortion care and are more likely to have to stay in contact with a violent partner.
The medical risk of coerced childbearing is significant: the U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate of any developed country. Here in Pennsylvania, while many lawmakers have been obsessed with passing abortion restrictions, they have allowed the maternal mortality rate to double since 1994. Like everywhere else, maternal and infant mortality rates are much higher for Black women and infants than their white counterparts.
As we heard in today’s hearing, the Hyde Amendment is an artifact of institutional racism. Eliminating the Hyde Amendment is an essential component of our nation’s long-overdue reckoning with racist reproductive coercion and oppression.
The Women’s Law Project is currently engaged in litigation for these very reasons. On January 16, 2019, represented by attorneys from the Women’s Law Project; attorney David S. Cohen; Planned Parenthood Federation of America; and the private law firm Troutman Pepper LLP, a group of Pennsylvania abortion providers filed a lawsuit challenging the state statute that bans abortion coverage through the Pennsylvania Medicaid program.
The Women’s Law Project is a public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing and defending the rights of women, girls, and LGBTQ+ people in Pennsylvania and beyond.
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