Saving America’s most important pro-life policy could depend on the outcome of the Georgia Senate runoff elections and the 2022 midterms.
Saving America’s most important pro-life policy could depend on the outcome of the Georgia Senate runoff elections and the 2022 midterms.
F or over four decades, the Hyde amendment — an annual budget measure that prohibits the Medicaid program from providing federal funding of abortions, except in rare and limited circumstances — has been America’s most important pro-life public policy. By one estimate, it has saved 60,000 human lives from abortion each year since it was first enacted. But the top Democrat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee made it clear this month that she intends to kill the Hyde amendment in 2021.
Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the incoming chair of the Appropriations Committee, held a hearing on December 8 specifically dedicated to the topic of ending the pro-life policy. While the appropriations bill that funds Medicaid “has carried the Hyde Amendment since 1976,” DeLauro said, “this is the last year.”
If Republicans win control of the Senate (they need one of the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia next week to do so), that would guarantee the Hyde amendment’s preservation for at least two more years. “I think if there’s a 50–50 Senate, it increases the odds” of House Democrats’ nixing the Hyde amendment because “there’s a chance it could get done,” Democratic congressman Dan Lipinski tells National Review. “Politically, I think it would be a huge mistake for Democrats.”
“In some ways, it might be tougher for Democrats if it winds up being a 50–50 Senate because the progressives are going to think, ‘Okay, we’ve got control of everything, so we have the opportunity to pass all these progressive policies,” Lipinski says. “That might be the worst thing that could happen for Democrats is to pick up these two seats. . . . And the worst thing for Joe Biden. Joe needs an excuse for cutting deals.”
Even if Democrats have a 50–50 Senate with Kamala Harris as the tie-breaker, Lipinski thinks it is unlikely that Pelosi would bring a bill repealing the Hyde amendment up for a vote on the House floor in 2021 because she might not have the votes to pass it, and the issue could cost Democrats the House majority in 2022. Republicans will be only a handful of seats away from a House majority, and taxpayer-funding of abortion is a deeply unpopular issue.
At a press conference this month, Pelosi said that she supports DeLauro’s efforts to end the Hyde amendment, but she was somewhat evasive when asked whether a bill nixing the Hyde amendment would make it to the House floor:
National Review: Will a bill repealing the Hyde amendment come up for a vote before the whole House in 2021?
Pelosi: Well, I don’t know if there will be a bill to do that, but it will be part of legislation. Yes, I think that is — I mean, I, myself, have been an opponent of the Hyde amendment long before I came to Congress. So I would be receptive to that happening, yes.
When Lipinski’s No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act last received a vote in 2017, only three Democrats voted for it. Two of those Democrats won’t be returning to Congress in the new year: Minnesota congressman Collin Peterson lost in the November general election, and Lipinski himself was defeated in a Democratic primary earlier this year that was waged against him largely because of his opposition to abortion. Lipinski thinks there are more House Democrats who oppose repealing the Hyde amendment but voted against the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act because that bill also prohibited elective-abortion coverage in the Obamacare exchanges.
If the House does pass a bill ending the Hyde amendment and Democrats control the Senate, efforts to save it will depend a lot on Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. While Montana Democratic senator Jon Tester flip-flopped this year on nuking the Senate filibuster, Manchin has sworn up and down since the November election that he will keep the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for most legislation, including the appropriations bill that funds Medicaid.
In 2016, Manchin said it was “crazy” when Democrats explicitly called for repealing the Hyde amendment in their party platform, and he now says he’d vote against legislation getting rid of it.
“As a life-long Catholic, I have always been pro-life and believe that the Hyde amendment ensures federal funds are not used to perform abortions anywhere in the country,” Manchin tells National Review in a written statement. “Repealing the Hyde amendment would be foolish and I’m strongly opposed to this push from some Members of Congress. If this legislation is brought before the Senate I will vote against repealing the Hyde amendment.”
At least a couple of other Senate Democrats say they still support the Hyde amendment, but their support has been less firm than Manchin’s.
“I’d hope that we can maintain [the Hyde amendment] in future appropriations bills,” Pennsylvania Democratic senator Bob Casey tells National Review. But Casey wouldn’t commit to voting against a spending bill that got rid of the Hyde amendment. “I’d have to take a look at the overall bill, but I’ve tried not to make one issue dispositive on a number of votes where sometimes there’s a part of a bill you may not agree with but you support the overall bill,” he said.
“I have been a longtime supporter of the Hyde amendment and I still am,” Virginia senator Tim Kaine tells National Review. But in 2016, as Hillary Clinton’s running-mate, Kaine said if elected vice president he would have been supportive of Clinton’s efforts to repeal the Hyde amendment.
While a frontal assault on the Hyde amendment wouldn’t succeed in 2021 if Manchin keeps his word, the effort could help lay the groundwork for its ultimate repeal. If Democrats win both Senate seats in Georgia, they could be just one seat away from having the votes to end the Senate filibuster and end the Hyde amendment. There are a handful of opportunities for Democrats to pick up Senate seats in 2022 in battleground states that Biden won or narrowly lost. Incumbent Democratic senators won’t be defending any seats in 2022 in states that Trump carried this year.
While it’s unlikely that Medicaid will provide federal funding for abortion in 2021, it is possible that Congress could provide taxpayer-funding of elective abortion by passing a government-run “public option” for health insurance.
President-elect Biden put a public option at the center of his health-care plan, and a Democratic Congress would likely attempt to enact a public option through the budget reconciliation process — legislation that is subject to complex rules but requires only a simple majority to pass the Senate.
In 2019, Biden specifically cited his proposed public option as one reason for abandoning his longtime support of the Hyde amendment. “I’ve been working through the final details of my health-care plan like others in this race, and I’ve been struggling with the problems that Hyde now presents,” Biden said in a June 2019 speech. He suggested the Hyde amendment would hinder his plan to “get universal coverage and to provide for the full range of health services women need — which I plan to do with the continued expansion of Medicaid and a public option.”
When the Affordable Care Act first made its way through Congress, the issue of taxpayer-funding of abortion nearly killed the bill. In November 2009, the House passed a version of Obamacare that included a public option but also applied the Hyde amendment to that new program and the federally subsidized Obamacare exchanges. (The Hyde amendment typically refers to Medicaid, but versions of it are also applied to other federal health-care plans, such as Medicare and the Federal Employee Health Benefits program.) With the support of self-described pro-life Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska, the bill that passed the Senate in December 2009 — and ultimately became law — dropped the public option and also dropped the Hyde amendment from the Obamacare exchanges. (The Nelson compromise included abortion coverage as a default option in the Obamacare exchanges but allowed states to pass laws prohibiting abortion coverage in their respective exchanges, and 26 states have banned it, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.)
If Democrats take the Senate and attempt to pass a public option in 2021, it’s easy to see the issue of taxpayer-funding of abortion becoming a sticking point again — this time, with all eyes on Joe Manchin as the potentially decisive vote. Asked about whether Manchin would oppose any public option that covers elective abortions, Manchin’s office did not provide a statement from the senator.