Saving America’s most important pro-life policy could depend on the outcome of the Georgia Senate runoff elections and the 2022 midterms.
For 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.
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