DAVID BEREIT: Pro-Life Movement Sends A Clear Message About A Political Liability For Republicans

Representative Henry Hyde’s legacy is slipping away before our eyes.

Since 1977, Rep. Hyde’s hard-won and bipartisan Hyde Amendment has prohibited the taxpayer funding of abortion in healthcare bills and saved an estimated 2.6 million lives—despite repeated attacks from abortion-advocacy groups like the Guttmacher Institute. In 2010, an unrecognizable Democratic Party bulldozed this victory through Obamacare, which intentionally bypassed Hyde protections. Though Republicans tried and failed to incorporate Hyde in the final version of Obamacare, their resolve on this central moral issue never faltered—until now.

Despite a Republican administration and control of Congress, 17 House Republicans joined Democrats in voting to extend Obamacare subsidies without Hyde protections. The pro-life movement—and the Republican voters who elect them—will not forget this retreat.

There is still hope, however, that the Senate will correct this historic blunder. Senators now face a grave moral choice with serious political consequences: insist that any Obamacare extensions include Hyde protections to preserve the consciences of taxpayers, protect the lives of unborn children, and uphold the well-being of their mothers—or abandon decades of policy and lose the backing of the pro-life movement in elections to come.

Until recently, Republicans uniformly understood that the Hyde Amendment—the pro-life movement’s first victory after Roe v. Wade—was the bare minimum standard of pro-life policy. President Donald Trump signed an executive order reinforcing Hyde just last January, but now he is asking pro-life advocates and lawmakers to do the unacceptable: to be “flexible” on a core issue that has kept taxpayer-funded abortion extremism at bay.

The pro-life movement is united in its pushback, recognizing that “flexibility” on this issue would violate well-formed consciences, erase decades of pro-life protections, and permanently weaken the party’s political bargaining power. And contrary to what some have claimed, Obamacare does not respect Hyde protections and has historically subsidized insurance plans