The pro-life movement is rejecting President Donald Trump’s admonition to be “a little bit flexible” on the Hyde Amendment, a policy which prohibits taxpayer-funded abortion.
“You’ve got to be a little bit flexible on Hyde,” Trump told House Republicans at their Members Retreat Tuesday.
The Hyde Amendment is federal policy, and Congress has enacted it each year since 1976 as part of appropriations legislation.
Obamacare is currently exempted from the Hyde Amendment. Many Republicans in Congress have said they will not support a health care deal without the policy in place to prevent federal subsidies from funding abortion coverage in health plans.
“To suggest Republicans should be ‘flexible’ is an abandonment of this decades-long commitment,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of leading pro-life group, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “If Republicans abandon Hyde, they are sure to lose this November.”
“The pro-life movement has been very clear: No Hyde, no deal,” she added.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said there is no room for flexibility on the Hyde Amendment.
“Abortion and gender experimentation are not health care,” he said. “The only flexibility needed is for the government to allow taxpayers to get out of the abortion and gender mutilation business.”
Trump had previously told The Daily Signal that abortion funding was a “factor†in the decision on whether or not to extend subsidies in the Affordable Care Act. Congress ultimately let the subsidies expire on Dec. 31.
“We’re going to look into it,†Trump said Dec. 19. “We’re going to look into a lot of things. That’s one of many factors.â€
Every year Democrats have voted for appropriations bills that include the Hyde Amendment.
Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala, said the “Hyde Amendment has saved over 2.6 million innocent lives.”
“My commitment to these protections is unchanging,” he said.
President of the March for Life, Jennie Bradley Lichter, said on X that Hyde is “pro-life 101, a longstanding baseline that saves lives and is widely supported by Americans.”
“Jettisoning Hyde and forcing Americans to pay for abortions with their taxpayer dollars is bad policy and bad politics,” she said.
“Life is not something we will ever be ‘flexible’ about!” Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins said on X.
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said he is not flexible on Hyde, and needs more details about what the president meant in his Tuesday remarks.
‘I’m not flexible on the value of every child’s life,” he told Politico. “Children are valuable, and so I’d have to get up to the context of what he meant by that.”
Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said forcing taxpayers to fund abortion is “unjust.”
“It is also politically unpopular,” he said. “Congressional Republicans should hold the line on Hyde.”
The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists said the Hyde Amendment is a non-negotiatable.
“Induced abortion is not healthcare, and Hyde ensures Americans aren’t forced to fund it, especially when millions oppose doing so,” the organization said on X. “Hyde must be protected and investments made in real healthcare for women and the pre-born.”
Dannenfelser on Wednesday warned that defying the pro-life movement would alienate “prolife canvasser motivation, base voters, causal and persuadable prolife voters” in the upcoming midterm elections.
“Throw in failing to get abortion pills out of the mail and the resulting death and harm to women and children and killing of state law sovereignty, and get ready to lose GOP,” Dannenfelser said on X.
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