How the Catholic Church Broke Congress
The Hyde Amendment is back.
From holding up Loretta Lynch’s confirmation as Attorney General and a bill to help victims of sex trafficking to threatening to blow up a carefully calibrated bipartisan agreement on a number of important health policy fixes, it seems there’s no end to the trouble caused by this amendment from hell.
It’s no secret that the Hyde Amendment — to ban federal funding of abortions for low-income women in the Medicaid program — was introduced by pro-life Catholic Congressman Henry Hyde in the mid-1970s and has plagued appropriations bills ever since. But what’s not as well known is the backstage role that the Catholic Church played in its creation.
In fact, without the church, there might not be a Hyde Amendment.
Henry Hyde was a first-term congressman from Illinois when he introduced the amendment in June of 1976. The fledgling anti-abortion movement had been trying desperately since Roe v. Wade three years earlier to get Congress to pass a “Human Life Amendment” to ban abortion, but wasn’t getting anywhere.