Four decades later, Hyde language still causes fuss

ONE of the items that didn’t make it into the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill approved last week by Congress was legislation to help health insurance exchanges. Consequently, some premiums could go up later this year. If so, some of the blame should fall to Democrats’ insistence on unfettered abortion rights.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and other Democrats say negotiations that had been ongoing for months unraveled when Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., insisted suddenly that Hyde amendment restrictions be applied to any health insurance bill. Alexander says that’s not the case — that he told Democrats all along that he would ask for the restrictions to apply.

Democrats’ claims of surprise are hard to buy. After all, iterations of the Hyde amendment, which bars the use of federal funds for abortion (with limited exceptions) and affects those who use Medicaid as their health insurance, have existed in health-related legislation since 1976.

For most of that time, members on both sides of the aisle have seen it as a workable compromise. Today, however, the Democratic Party sees the Hyde language as simply an impediment to abortion on demand.

In 2016, the party included repeal of the Hyde amendment in its presidential platform. “We believe unequivocally, like the majority of Americans, that every woman should have access to quality reproductive health care services, including safe and legal abortion — regardless of where she lives, how much money she makes, or how she is insured,” the platform said.

This was in line with what we heard from Hillary Clinton on the stump, and saw during the Obama administration, which sought to force even religiously affiliated groups to provide free birth control, including abortifacients, as part of their health care plans. This mindset is evident in California, where the Democrat-dominated legislature passed a law (now before the U.S. Supreme Court) requiring pregnancy centers that don’t offer abortions to advertise where women can get state-subsidized abortions, and in deep blue New York state, where Democrats want to decriminalize late-term abortions.

Earlier this month, Democrat Conor Lamb won a special election for a U.S. House seat in Pennsylvania by running as a moderate. But Vox’s Matthew Yglesias notes that, “By all the normal rules of American politics, he is pro-choice and not pro-life.”

Those rules used to be different. There was a time when Democrats like Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson could talk in opposition to the funding of abortion and not be considered traitors to the party cause. Indeed in 1977, Jackson wrote that, “as a matter of conscience I must oppose the use of federal funds for a policy of killing infants.” As a candidate for president 11 years later, Jackson had done a 180 and has been there ever since.

Last fall, Senate Democrats introduced a singlepayer health care bill that sought to expand eligibility for Medicare to all Americans by, among other things, eliminating the Hyde amendment. Women “have been denied health care for too long because of restrictions like the Hyde amendment,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

Did Alexander surprise his colleagues? Doubtful. But regardless, he and other Republicans are right to insist on keeping, and using, the Hyde amendment.