The Reasons for Abolishing the Hyde Amendment

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Table of Contents

Introduction
The Hyde Amendment
Why the Amendment Should Be Abolished
Conclusion
References

Introduction

The right to choose is one of the fundamental rights that a citizen of any country has. This ability to make independent decisions extends to all areas of life, including swings abortion. The choice to keep or terminate the pregnancy is essential for every woman, as there are many internal and external factors behind it. The Hyde Amendment was adopted as a measure to ban federal funding of abortions in the United States of America. This scientific paper aims to provide a justification for why this legislative decision should be abolished. The main reason is that the Hyde amendment has such negative consequences as the development of illegal abortions, which negatively affects the well-being of women and society as a whole.

The Hyde Amendment

Hyde Amendment plays a unique role in the fight for legalization and federal sponsorship of abortions. This document becomes a point of opposition to the pro-choice movement, as it is a legislative provision barring the use of federal funds to pay for abortion (Dickman et al., 2021; “Public funding for abortion”, n.d.). However, the amendment states that the only exceptions are cases where an abortion can save a woman’s life or if an unwanted pregnancy occurred as a result of incest or rape.

The introduction of this legislative document has led to a significant reduction in the ways to cover abortion under Medicaid and other federal programs. It is worth noting that the Hyde amendment is not a full-fledged legislative act. It is considered a rider to the Congressional Appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which has been updated every year since its adoption in 1976 (Adashi & Occhiogrosso, 2017). Throughout this time, this act has been supported by legislators who oppose abortion and oppose the federal government’s use of taxpayer money for the termination of pregnancy (“Access denied”, n.d.). The Hyde Amendment is currently distributed in thirty-four states and the District of Columbia (Robinson, 2017). In the rest of the American states, the provision of abortions is supported by their own funding for people with Medicaid.

Why the Amendment Should Be Abolished

The main reason why the Hyde Amendment should be repealed is the negative consequences that it entailed both for women’s health and for society as a whole. The study found that “twenty-nine percent of Black women and 25% of Hispanic women of reproductive age were enrolled in Medicaid as of 2019, compared with just 15% of white women” (Kolbert & Kay, 2021). Thus, one can see the trend that it is the representatives of the black and Hispanic population of the United States of America who experience the most difficulties. The discrepancy is also caused by the fact that with the cancellation of federal funding for termination of pregnancy, women with Medicaid can receive full coverage of childbirth-related expenses (“State funding of abortion under Medicaid”, 2022). It is also worth emphasizing that the Hyde amendment has contributed to the exclusion of abortions from insurance plans for government employees in some states. This fact also applies to the insurance coverage provided by private employers.

When first introduced, the amendment against federal sponsorship of abortions in the United States affected only cases under Medicaid insurance, a state and federal health program for low-income individuals. However, due to the fact that Congress updates this rider every year, some changes have been added to it. Henceforth, it now restricts abortion funding under the Indian Health Service, Medicare, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (“The Hyde Amendment: A discriminatory ban on insurance coverage of abortion,” 2021). Moreover, the Hyde amendment has also extended to other documents and federal programs that are in any way related to the procedure for providing abortions and health services to women including. This includes the military’s TRICARE program, federal prisons, the Peace Corps, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (Nath, 2021). This fact also contributes to the restriction of women when receiving services to terminate unwanted pregnancies and significantly reduces their rights as people.

As already mentioned, the amendment should be removed due to the fact that it has many negative consequences on women’s health. This problem has received a particular concentration among representatives of the low-income population and black women (Fig. 1). Hence, despite the termination of federal funding, abortion rates in the country remain at a reasonably high level, as women seeking help turn to illegal methods.

One of the reasons for this fact is that women of color are more inclined to be insured by Medicaid. Thus, among this group of the population, there is a high degree of occurrence of unwanted pregnancy, and thereby they desire to resort to the procedure of its termination. When implementing the Hyde Amendment, possible negative contributions to women’s health and society were taken into account, but they immediately impacted poor women’s ability to obtain abortions. At the same time, the predictions were exaggerated because they did not calculate the actual funding situation before the amendment was passed. This happened because it was initially expected that all of the United States would follow the new rider. Thus, there was also an incorrect assessment of the response of the country’s female population to innovations.

Fig. 1. Women who get abortions are disproportionately low-income, young and racial/ethnic minorities (Salganicoff et al., 2021).

The fact that not all states follow the Hyde Amendment policy is since the Medicaid insurance program is funded by the federal and state governments. Thus, they can independently make decisions about allowing and refusing to finalize the termination of the pregnancy procedure. However, the primary condition is that American states should use their revenues, and not federal funds, to maintain the provision of this kind of service. That is why sixteen democrats are still pursuing their policies to provide funding for providing abortions to low-income women insured by Medicaid (Astor, 2019). The exception is also the state of Arizona, which does not sponsor outside of circumstances permitted by Hyde despite court orders directing them to do so.

Therefore, the Hyde amendment becomes an obstacle to giving women the right to choose whether to keep the pregnancy or get rid of it. This happens even though there are exceptional cases in which women are allowed to have an abortion. These are, for example, in cases of rape or incest, if the parents cannot marry legally if the pregnancy jeopardizes the woman’s health (Kortsmit et al., 2020). Moreover, this circumstance also applies to the case when one or both parents have one of a limited number of designated hereditary disorders or communicable diseases (Barr, 2017). As already mentioned, the prohibition of abortions can become a severe and extraordinary threat to women’s health. This is since pregnant women, realizing that pregnancy is undesirable or not acceptable for the mother and family, begin to look for ways to get rid of it. Thus, it contributes to the emergence of an industry providing illegal health services that put the health, well-being, and future ability of women to have children at risk.

Conclusion

Further, at the moment, more emphasis is being placed on the fact that countries are making it their task to increase the population. However, banning abortions is not such a practical measure, as it has significant negative consequences (Donovan, 2017). To do this, it is possible to use many other steps to support families who have decided to have one or more children. In addition, it is possible to introduce initiatives to maintain access to prenatal and obstetric care and generous parental leave for both women and men. From a social point of view, it is necessary to introduce steps to reduce the stigma toward single and unmarried parents. On the part of a more local level, it is possible to relax measures and introduce more available funding for abortion services and related expenses through philanthropic organizations and other programs.

Therefore, this work dealt with the need to repeal the Hyde amendment, which prohibits federal funding for the termination of pregnancy. Therefore, it considered aspects of this rider for the states and the fact that despite the desired results of the government, this initiative is still not supported by all states. Moreover, the amendment has serious negative consequences for the health and well-being of women, which also directly affects society. This is since in the absence of obtaining an abortion on medical insurance, pregnant women turn to illegal services of medical specialists, which can only worsen the situation and leave a woman infertile. At the end of the work, it was noted that if the primary goal of the Hyde amendment is to contribute to an increase in the population. However, other more practical steps that have less negative consequences can be applied by the government.

References

Access denied: Origins of the Hyde Amendment and the other restrictions on public funding for abortion. (n.d.). ACLU.

Adashi, E. Y., & Occhiogrosso, R. H. (2017). The Hyde amendment at 40 years and reproductive rights in the United States: perennial and panoptic. Jama, 317(15), 1523-1524.

Astor, M. (2019). What is the Hyde Amendment? A look at its impact as Biden reverses his stance.The New York Times.

Barr, H. (2017). Demanding access to abortion in South Korea.Human Rights Watch.

Dickman, S. L., White, K., & Grossman, D. (2021). Affordability and access to abortion care in the United States.JAMA Internal Medicine, 181(9), 1157-1158.

Donovan, M.K. (2017). In real life: Federal restrictions on abortion coverage and the women they impact. Guttmacher Institute.

Israel, M. (2021). Abortion funding: Save the Hyde Amendment. Heritage Foundation Issue Brief, (5206).

Kolbert, K., & Kay, J. (2021). Op-Ed: Why Congress must abolish the most destructive abortion restriction ever passed.Los Angeles Times.

Kortsmit, K., Jatlaoui, T. C., Mandel, M. G., Reeves, J. A., Oduyebo, T., Petersen, E., & Whiteman, M. K. (2020). Abortion surveillance-United States, 2018. MMWR Surveillance Summaries, 69(7).

Nath, J. (2021). Sins against science: How misinformation affects our lives and laws. McFarland Incorporated Publishers.

Public funding for abortion. (n.d.). ACLU.

Robinson, J. L. (2017). Political developments in the abortion area. The Catholic Lawyer, 25(4), 9.

Salganicoff, A., Sobel, L., & Ramaswamy, A. (2021). The Hyde Amendment and coverage for abortion services.Kaiser Family Foundation.

State funding of abortion under Medicaid. (2022). Guttmacher Institute.

The Hyde Amendment: A discriminatory ban on insurance coverage of abortion. (2021). Guttmacher Institution.

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