Abortion Explained!
The Hyde & Helms Amendments
Ever wonder why your medical insurance covers every pregnancy care option except abortion? Ever wondered why abortion access can be hard to come by in other countries that receive funding from the United States? That’s by design.
Shortly after abortion was legalized in 1973, conservative lawmakers wanted to create ways to make it harder for people to access it. In fact, by the end of 1973, Congress had already attached the Helms Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act which banned U.S. foreign aid from being used for abortion care. This means, in order to keep receiving funding from the United States, foreign organizations weren’t allowed to provide funding for abortions. The Helms Amendment is an outdated, xenophobic, and racist policy that forces people of other nations to abide by horrific American anti-abortion beliefs. The Helms Amendment is unjust and colonialist at its core. Through the Helms Amendment, the United States continues to maintain its imperialist reign on the world and our pregnant bodies.
Following the Helms Amendment, beginning in 1976, Congress attached the Hyde Amendment to the annual budget, which banned the use of federal funds for programs like Medicaid health insurance and Indian Health Service from covering abortions. Initially, the amendment did not include exceptions for cases of rape, incest, or health indications. The intention of the Hyde Amendment was always to harm people who needed help paying for their abortions, particularly Black and Brown people and those who earn low incomes. According to Representative Barbara Lee (CA), when the Hyde Amendment’s namesake the late Representative Henry Hyde (IL) discussed the amendment, he claimed it would only impact “little ghetto kids.”
In fact, Representative Hyde widely was known for his extremely racist, classist, and denigrating language about people who have abortions when defending the Hyde Amendment. In response to the argument that the Hyde Amendment creates a two-tiered system making abortion virtually unaffordable to people without access to money, on the House floor he said:
Mr. Speaker, let the poor women of America make a list of those things that society denies them and which are enjoyed by rich women. Decent housing, decent education, decent food, decent income, and then say to them, “Now, those will take second place. But we will encourage you to kill your unborn young children. Besides, there are too many of you anyway. If rich women want to enjoy their high-priced vices, that is their responsibility. They can get a face-lift. They can fly to Las Vegas and gamble. That is fine, but not at the taxpayers’ expense...Birth is no big deal It is just a change of address.
The impact of the Hyde Amendment over the past four decades is significant considering Black and Brown people are most likely to need Medicaid, a means-tested health insurance program, meaning that people enrolled have to show that they don’t earn enough money for private insurance in order to enroll. The cost of an abortion—which can range from $500 to upwards of $10,000—is extremely steep for people who are making the minimum wage and trying to care for the children they already have. Research has shown that the Hyde Amendment forces at least 1 in 4 people enrolled in Medicaid to continue unwanted pregnancies.
“I certainly would like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion….Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the… Medicaid bill.”
— Congressman Henry Hyde (IL)
“But under the Hyde Amendment, the Government will fund only those procedures incidental to childbirth. By thus injecting coercive financial incentives favoring childbirth into a decision that is constitutionally guaranteed to be free from governmental intrusion, the Hyde Amendment deprives the indigent woman of her freedom to choose abortion over maternity, thereby impinging on the due process liberty right recognized in Roe v. Wade….Moreover, both the legislation in Maher and the Hyde Amendment were designed to deprive poor and minority women of the constitutional right to choose abortion. That purpose is not constitutionally permitted under Roe v. Wade.”
— Justice Thurgood Marshall
Given that the Hyde Amendment was clearly discriminatory in its impact, advocates sued to try to overturn it, however, they were unsuccessful.
In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled in the case Harris v. McRae, upholding that the Hyde Amendment. In his dissent, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall underscored the injustice of it all.
I found out I was pregnant on my 19th birthday while inside of an anti-abortion crisis pregnancy center. I told them I did not want my ex-partner in the room for the ultrasound, but they invited him in any way. I told them I was in constant pain and that I was losing weight. Rather than medical advice, they gave me a blue onesie and a bottle of prenatal vitamins.
I had an extremely difficult few weeks after that. Gestational diabetes made my blood sugar low every few hours leaving me in cold sweats and vomiting all day. My body continued to struggle heavily and I knew that I could not continue my pregnancy while keeping myself healthy. I called my CHIP case manager and was told that I couldn’t be helped because Texas bans insurance coverage of abortion. I was told that I wasn’t going to die; I only felt like I was.
I was then forced to resume my job as an erotic dancer while 14 weeks pregnant in order to pay for the abortion care I needed. I wasn’t able to raise the full $700 within the time crunch I was on, so a few friends pitched in what they could to help me. I owe them everything and more. I feel like they saved my life. Sex work and solidarity did more for me than the State ever could. Every person should have unrestricted access to medical care, regardless of circumstance.
— Makayla Montoya Frazier, We Testify Storyteller
The impact on us today.
The impact of the Hyde Amendment is far-reaching as anti-abortion politicians have tried to expand its devastating impact into other unrelated policies and have successfully ensured a similar policy doesn’t allow insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act to cover abortions. One of the most challenging barriers to overcome is the ability to pay for care within a quick timeframe. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Unsurprisingly, these federal restrictions were created by politicians who have a racist and discriminatory history. Our right to an abortion is meaningless when classist and racist policies prevent us from accessing it. The Hyde Amendment and Helms Amendment have prevented and delayed millions of us from accessing timely abortion care, particularly those of us who are Black and Brown, undocumented, living on low incomes, queer, and disabled. In fact, the Hyde Amendment explicitly bans undocumented people from receiving reproductive healthcare coverage from state health programs like Children’s Health Insurance Plan (CHIP), Medicare, Medicaid, and Affordable Care Act plans.
Although research from the University of California at San Francisco, The Turnaway Study, showed denying abortion can lead to long-term negative physical and mental health impacts on the person who was unable to obtain an abortion, and it can also impact the child, lawmakers continuously pass measures that make abortion access impossible for those of us who need it most.
Fortunately, advocates like our friends at All* Above All are working on efforts to end the Hyde Amendment—and coverage bans like it—once and for all. The EACH Act (Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance Act) is bold legislation, introduced by members of Congress including abortion storyteller Representative Barbara Lee (CA) that would set up the federal government as a standard-bearer, ensuring that every person who receives care or insurance through the federal government will have coverage for abortion services and prohibits political interference with decisions by private health insurance companies to offer coverage for abortion care.
Until abortion is accessible for all, we must demand our elected officials reject measures that limit and restrict abortion within our communities and have conversations with our loved ones about why we want everyone to have unfettered access to abortion care no matter where they get their health insurance from.
“By the time I found out I was pregnant I was about 13 or 14 weeks along, and I knew I didn’t want to have another child right then. I remember thinking that I would just use my insurance, my Medicaid, to pay for the procedure. That wasn’t the case, obviously. I couldn’t use it, and I couldn’t come up with the money. I couldn’t even borrow the money.
There was no “choice” either way. Because of my income, and because Medicaid wouldn’t cover the procedure, there was just no choice. That really hit me I guess when I was 17 or 18 weeks into the pregnancy after I had been calling around about the insurance and knew I couldn’t afford it. I thought, “OK, this is what it is.” I was forced to carry the pregnancy to term, and I didn’t want to. That’s rough. That was really rough for me.”
— Brittany Mostiller, We Testify Storyteller