While reproductive justice activists across the nation celebrate last week’s 5-3 Supreme Court decision on the Texas abortion laws case, we should not forget the June 30 anniversary of the ugly 5-4 decision in Harris v. McRae (and the Maher v. Roe case that preceded it) that locked in the Hyde Amendment. It remains in force until this day.
Here’s some background on the Hyde Amendment:
In 1973, when abortion became legal across the country, the federal Medicaid program covered abortion as a part of standard medical care. In the first years of legalized abortion, federal Medicaid paid for over one-third of all abortions performed in the U.S. It became clear that Medicaid coverage of abortion is essential for low-income women to build the lives they want.
In 1976, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment, which banned federal Medicaid coverage of abortion. The law went into effect in 1977, and in 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Hyde Amendment did not violate the constitutional rights of women on Medicaid. The intent of the Hyde Amendment is to make it more difficult for low-income women to get the abortions they need.
Here are the words of Henry Hyde, the Republican Congressman from Illinois who sponsored the bill, making its intent perfectly clear.
‘“I certainly would like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor woman,” he said. “Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the … Medicaid bill.”
Many of those middle- and upper-class women have always been able to evade draconian laws restricting abortion. Access to needed medical procedures has been an airplane ride away for those who live in states with restrictive laws. That’s not so for their poorer sisters.
This year, the Democratic Party platform is taking a strong stance on reproductive rights:
Reproductive Rights: The platform goes further than previous Democratic platforms on women’s reproductive rights. It champions Planned Parenthood health centers and commits to push back on all Republican efforts to defund it. The platform also vows to oppose, and seek to overturn, all federal and state laws that impede a woman’s access to abortion, including by repealing the Hyde Amendment. It also strongly supports the repeal of harmful restrictions that obstruct women’s access to healthcare around the world, including the Global Gag Rule and the Helms Amendment, which bars US assistance to other countries that provide safe, legal, abortion. have waited a long time to see these words “repealing the Hyde Amendment.”
Many of us have waited a very long time to finally see the possibility of sending Hyde back to the hell of forced birtherism that spawned it. Today, we stand at the crossroads of justice. We have within our grasp the ability to shift the Supreme Court for decades to come, and to gift future generations of women the right to their own bodies.
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/rd2l4oF3VlQ/-To-hell-with-Hyde
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