Hyde Amendment Pros And Cons

In 1973, legal abortion was established in the United States. Medicaid, the health insurance program which covers women at or below the poverty level, covered abortion like every medical service. When abortion was legalized, over one-third of all abortions were covered by Medicaid (National Network of Abortion Funds, n.d.). The Hyde amendment was introduced in 1976, when this statistic was upsetting many taxpayers because the assumption is the poverty level women are using abortion as birth control, using tax dollars to abort.

To take steps to initiate change in a policy, like Hyde, the Center For Reproductive Rights (n.d.) recommendations include: joining groups and states nationally to help overturn the amendment keeping all members of
The Hyde amendment has saved lives, 25% of abortions have been prevented since the act was put into place (Smith, n.d.). Though, if the Hyde amendment was overturned, there would benefits to the low income population because they wouldn’t lack the right to have an abortion without money in their hands. Low income women feel they should have the right to an abortion, whether they can afford it or not (American Civil Liberties Union, n.d.). The Reproductive Freedom Project has a goal to use the state constitutional law of “all men are created equal” to overturn the public funding of abortion (American Civil Liberties Union, n.d.). During a debate, Rep. Hyde stated, "I would certainly 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 HEW Medicaid bill. A life is a life (Fried, 2007)." This statement targets the poor because he admitted he cannot do anything else to help stop women from obtaining abortions.
The goals of the Hyde Amendment is to help save government funds, as well as the lives of babies. President Obama stated, “I’m pro-choice, but I think we also have the tradition in this town, historically, of not financing abortions as part of government-funded health care (Fried, 2011).” Government funding of an abortion would save more money than if the child is on welfare for the rest of their lives, as well as the prenatal care covered during a pregnancy. The cost of covering a pregnancy through delivery is 4-5 times the amount of covering an abortion (Henshaw et al.,