Behind closed doors, White House officials are being noncommittal on whether a Senate GOP–drafted health care bill will include strong Hyde protections.
When President Donald Trump urged House Republicans at their policy retreat last week to be “a little flexible on Hyde” in continuing health care negotiations, alarm bells went off in the offices of pro-life groups across the country.
“Let the money go — in the health care account or however you do it — let the money go directly to the people,” Trump told GOP lawmakers at the Kennedy Center last week, referencing his support for a health care proposal that would direct federal funding into health savings accounts. “Now, you have to be a little flexible on Hyde. You know that.”
Some activists went directly to administration officials for clarity on the president’s controversial remarks regarding the Hyde amendment, a legislative provision that prevents taxpayer dollars from funding abortion. In response, administration officials have told some pro-life activists in recent days that the president often speaks off-the-cuff in public settings and that he got ahead of himself on the issue during his House GOP retreat remarks. White House officials have maintained privately to pro-life leaders that the president’s call for flexibility reflects the president’s general desire for health care focused negotiations to progress in good faith.
The administration’s private efforts to assuage pro-life groups’ concerns have left many activists in Washington feeling confused about where the administration will land on the issue in a congressional GOP health care bill. Many are worried that the president will compromise with Democrats on the issue out of fear that that abortion will become a major sticking point for the GOP in 2026 midterms, and that the political importance of health care legislation supersedes pro-life concerns.
The administration is trying to navigate this year’s legislative landscape while also appealing to “people who aren’t necessarily just single-issue voters on abortion,” a White House official told National Review in an interview. “We’re not abandoning the pro-life movement, but we’re trying to operate with the constraints that we have to operate within.”
As the administration sees it, there are different ways to move the ball forward on enacting pro-life policies. The White House official pointed to the administration’s work on other abortion-related issues, such as Trump’s decision last year to pardon pro-life activists who blocked access to abortion clinics, or the administration’s decision to reinstate the Mexico City policy, which blocks funding to international organizations that provide abortion services or abortion counseling.
The White House declined to comment on whether Trump will commit to Hyde amendment protections in any GOP health care bill.
Administration officials’ private efforts to placate pro-life activists in recent days mirrored remarks made by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt last week. “The president did not change the administration’s policy,” Leavitt told reporters at a briefing last week. “It was President Trump who signed an executive order protecting the Hyde amendment. It’s the Trump administration that has taken multiple actions on various fronts to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not funding the practice of abortion.”
But behind closed doors, White House officials are being noncommittal to pro-life groups on whether a Trump-backed Senate GOP drafted health care bill will include strong Hyde protections, which have become a major sticking point on Capitol Hill in recent weeks. Worries surrounding how health care negotiations are playing out prompted dozens of prominent anti-abortion groups to pen a public letter to Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and congressional GOP leaders on January 9 insisting that “Life is a winning issue, and prohibiting forced taxpayer funding of abortion is non-negotiable.”
In a boon to pro-life groups, House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested last week that compromising on Hyde protections is a nonstarter for House GOP leadership. “We are not going to change the standard that we’re not going to use taxpayer funding for abortion,” Johnson told reporters last week. “I’m just not going to allow that to happen.”
While most Republican lawmakers view Hyde protections as nonnegotiable in any health care bill, there are new cracks in the congressional pro-life coalition: Last week, 17 House Republicans joined Democratic colleagues in passing a clean three-year extension of the enhanced pandemic-era Obamacare subsidies, which don’t include Hyde protections. And some Senate Republicans have suggested that they are willing to compromise on the issue with Democrats, for whom Hyde protections are a nonstarter in any health care package.
As National Review recently reported, this month’s mixed messaging from administration officials on the president’s call for flexibility on the issue follows White House officials’ private pleas to some prominent pro-life activists ahead of Thanksgiving break to keep their Hyde concerns private so as not to aggravate the negotiating process on health care legislation.
Worries about Hyde amendment protections in congressional health care negotiations come as many anti-abortion activists were already unnerved by recent reporting in Bloomberg News that the Food and Drug Administration is delaying a safety review of the abortion drug mifepristone until after the midterm elections. A Health and Human Services has called the reporting “baseless.”
HHS also quietly restored tens of millions of frozen Title X funds to Planned Parenthood in December, prompting the ACLU to drop its lawsuit against the administration over the matter earlier this week, according to Politico. The funds were originally withheld over alleged violations of federal civil rights law related to race-based hiring and the targeting of care to illegal immigrants.
Moreover, some pro-life groups still feel jilted that the Republican National Committee watered down the national party platform’s language on abortion during the 2024 cycle, stripping all former references to a human-life amendment and 20-week abortion ban in favor of Trump’s preferred federalist approach to abortion. The new 16-page document references the word “abortion” only once, asserting that Republicans “oppose Late Term Abortion, while supporting mothers and policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments).”