By the early 1980s, Congress had added restrictions similar to the Hyde Amendment to other federal programs on which an estimated 50 million people rely for their health care or insurance. In fiscal 19, the Hyde Amendment again contained exceptions for rape and incest victims.įederal restrictions on public funding for abortion affect women other than those who receive Medicaid. Thereafter, Congress enacted the Hyde Amendment with only that exception from the second half of fiscal 1981 through fiscal 1993. Mathews) and upheld the constitutionality of the original Hyde Amendment language containing a single exception for life endangerment. However, in 1980 the Supreme Court decided Harris v. After hard-fought battles in Congress, the fiscal 1978 Hyde Amendment contained - in addition to the exception for life endangerment - new exceptions for rape and incest victims and women whose health would be severely damaged by carrying a pregnancy to term. With the Hyde Amendment in effect, abortions financed by federal Medicaid funds dropped from about 300,000 per year to a few thousand.Īlthough the Hyde Amendment has been reenacted every year since 1976, the exceptions to the funding ban have varied over the years. The United States Supreme Court vacated the injunction in August, 1977, after issuing two decisions that upheld state limitations on the use of public funds for abortion. Implementation of the 1977 Hyde Amendment was blocked for nearly a year by an injunction obtained by the Reproductive Freedom Project, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and Planned Parenthood, representing a pregnant Medicaid recipient and health care providers who challenged the Hyde Amendment in McRae v. Hyde, the Hyde Amendment barred the use of federal Medicaid funds for abortion except when the life of the woman would be endangered by carrying the pregnancy to term. Introduced by anti-choice Congressman Henry J. Wade was decided, Congress passed the first "Hyde Amendment" to the fiscal 1977 Medicaid appropriation. The inequity caused by funding restrictions is almost as old as the constitutional right to abortion itself. And it has filed precedent-setting lawsuits to challenge the bans under federal and state constitutional law. The Reproductive Freedom Project has long fought against the passage of federal and state laws that ban funding for abortion. A central tenet of our mission is to ensure that the most vulnerable in American society receive equal treatment under the law. The ACLU is committed to ending this discrimination and the hardships it imposes. Studies have shown that from 18 to 33 percent of Medicaid-eligible women who want abortions, but who live in states that do not provide funding, have been compelled to give birth. Some women are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. The delays that ensue as women try to scrape together funds cause many women to have later, riskier, and more costly abortions. A 1984 study conducted by researchers from The Alan Guttmacher Institute showed that 44 percent of women on Medicaid who obtained abortions that year paid for them with money earmarked for living expenses, such as food, rent, and utilities. The federal and state bans on public funding for abortion subject women to dire hardships. For no covered medical service that men need does the federal Medicaid program restrict the standard for reimbursement as it does for abortions. Nor do Medicaid-eligible women have the same rights as men who depend on publicly funded health care. In practice, these women do not have the same rights as other American women who can finance an abortion out-of-pocket or through private insurance coverage. The states have the right to fund more than federal law permits, but they may not fund less.įederal and state restrictions on public funding for abortion make it extremely difficult and, often, impossible for Medicaid recipients to exercise their constitutional right to safe and legal abortion. Although the joint federal-state Medicaid program covers every other pregnancy-related service, the federal government and many states have enacted restrictions on Medicaid funding for abortion.
For far too long, the 6.5 million women in America who obtain health care through the Medicaid system have been treated as second-class citizens. Restoring abortion funding for poor women is an immediate priority for the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.
Promoting Reproductive Freedom for Low-Income Women
0 kommentar(er)
