Hyde Amendment at 50: The law that may have saved millions
This week (Sept. 30) we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Hyde Amendment, a congressional provision barring the use of federal funds to pay for abortion except to save the mother's life. Congress first passed the amendment on Sept. 30, 1976. After years of legal challenges, the Supreme Court upheld it in 1980 in Harris v. McRae. Before the Hyde Amendment took full effect, an estimated 300,000 abortions were paid for each year with federal funds in the aftermath of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion on demand.
Thus, at the very least, the Hyde Amendment may have saved the lives of as many as 3.6 million babies (300,000 babies x 12 years) by 1993, when President Bill Clinton signed into law a new version of the Hyde Amendment that expanded Medicaid funding to include cases of rape and incest.
Henry Hyde, the late Republican congressman from Illinois, told me personally that he considered passing the Hyde Amendment his greatest achievement as a legislator. I agree with him.
The Hyde Amendment has survived several challenges at the Supreme Court. On Jan. 24, 2017, the House voted to make the Hyde Amendment permanent (H.R. 7), though the measure did not pass the Senate.
As of 2016, 57% of the American public supported Hyde, and 36% opposed it. Opponents of the Hyde Amendment argue that it disproportionately affects low-income women, who are forced to carry babies to term because they cannot obtain federal funds to abort the child. Pro-lifers respond that it favors the unborn children of poor mothers, who are significantly more likely to be born than the children of more affluent pro-abortion mothers.
It should also be pointed out that without Hyde, pro-life taxpayers would be forced to help pay for millions of unborn citizens being killed before birth.
The debates over the Hyde Amendment also furnished a platform for extensive debate about the humanity of the human fetus from conception onward.
The introduction of "the heart is beating (25 days gestation) by the time the mother knows she is pregnant" proved convincing for many. The beautiful descriptions of the growth and development of the baby in utero by pro-lifers such as Susan Schaeffer Macaulay in Something Beautiful from God (1980) had a big impact. So did the remarkably popular and influential Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (1979), written by Macaulay's father, Francis Schaeffer, in collaboration with former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop. Both did a great deal to humanize the human fetus in the American mind.
Unfortunately, we are still practicing human sacrifice every day across America as we allow our unborn citizens to be poisoned, burned alive in saline solutions, and rent asunder in their mothers' bodies because they are considered too expensive, too embarrassing, too inconvenient, or not healthy enough to live.
It is estimated that we may have aborted as many as 80 million of our fellow citizens. May God forgive us and help us to revalue every human life. God had a plan and a purpose for every one of those unborn babies. God never created a nobody.
Thank you, Henry Hyde, for being a tireless defender of the unborn.
Dr. Richard Land, BA (Princeton, magna cum laude); D.Phil. (Oxford); Th.M (New Orleans Seminary). Dr. Land served as President of Southern Evangelical Seminary from July 2013 until July 2021. Upon his retirement, he was honored as President Emeritus and he continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor of Theology & Ethics. Dr. Land previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) where he was also honored as President Emeritus upon his retirement. Dr. Land has also served as an Executive Editor and columnist for The Christian Post since 2011.
Dr. Land explores many timely and critical topics in his daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive,” and in his weekly column for CP.
