Anti-Abortion Advocates Hit Block With Hyde Amendment

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters/Kathy Finn) - Henry Hyde, a champion of the anti-abortion movement, might turn over in his grave if he knew that a provision of law he authored was an obstacle to individual states banning abortion.

The Hyde Amendment, named for the Illinois Republican who served in Congress for 32 years and died in 2007, initially barred the use of certain federal funds, namely Medicaid health insurance for the poor, to pay for abortion.

But the provision, which has been attached to U.S. spending bills since 1976, was changed in 1977 to allow exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape or incest.

In a strange twist of fate, the Hyde Amendment -- whose purpose was to deny federal funding for abortions -- has become a stumbling block in efforts to stop abortions altogether, said Keith Mason, founder and president of the anti-abortion group Personhood USA.

"A compromise in legislation that was part of the pro-life movement is the very hurdle that we have to overcome," he told Reuters.

This week lawmakers in Louisiana's state House effectively killed a bill that would have banned abortion outright. The author of that failed bill said lawmakers were put off by a state fiscal analysis that showed that $4.5 billion in federal funds could be at risk if the state criminalizes rape- and incest-related abortion, putting state law out of compliance with Hyde.

"The Hyde Amendment, or rather the exception to the amendment, is our primary obstacle right now," Louisiana State Representative John LaBruzzo, who sponsored the bill, told Reuters.

Since Republicans swept to victory nationwide in the midterm elections last year, states with Republican legislative majorities have been chipping away at abortion rights.

So far this year four states have banned abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, joining Nebraska which did the same before the election. Alabama could soon make it six states after its legislature this week approved such a law and sent it to a Republican governor for signature.

Some other states have moved to deny funding to organizations offering abortions such as Planned Parenthood. Indiana did this and the legality of the measure is now before the courts.

Iowa has considered passing a law barring an abortion clinic in Nebraska from setting up business across the state line in Iowa to flee the tighter law in Nebraska.

But none of these efforts fundamentally challenges the Supreme Court decision on Roe v. Wade in 1973 that made abortion legal in the United States.

The Louisiana law derailed by the Hyde provision, would have been a direct attack on Roe v. Wade.

"Clearly, (a state) banning abortion would set up a challenge to Roe v. Wade," said Elizabeth Nash, a public policy associate with the Guttmacher Institute in Washington, D.C., which conducts research and policy analysis related to reproductive health.

Louisiana is not the only state to consider so-called "personhood" laws that would define life as beginning at conception, in effect banning abortion.

In Alabama, a bill that would have redefined the word "person" in the state's legal code failed to reach a final vote on the last day of the state's legislative session. The bill stipulated that human life begins at the moment a woman's egg is fertilized and its primary aim was to ban abortion.

And the Mississippi Supreme Court heard arguments on Monday about whether to allow an abortion-related measure on a November ballot. The initiative would redefine "person" in the state constitution as beginning at fertilization.

Advocates of a ban on abortion plan to try again in Louisiana and other states.

Personhood USA's Mason said every state vote on abortion has the potential to enlarge the anti-abortion movement. "We see we have the ability to change the opinions of the electorate by bringing it up again and again," he said. "This debate is not going away."

But Jordan Goldberg, state advocacy counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, called the "personhood" efforts "really extreme measures."

"The reason these legislative efforts are not being successful is because banning abortion is a bad idea - it's bad for women, it's bad public policy and it's unconstitutional," she said.

(Editing by Corrie MacLaggan and Greg McCune)

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

Comments

[eskeeemo]

02:57 PM on 06/28/2011

Personhood?! Why did this make me shudder in fear? Stay away from my body. Let me make up my own mind. The war on women is getting scary and people should be horrified.

[OlongapoEd]

04:24 PM on 06/16/2011

So "the biggest and the badest (sic) make the rules"? Really? *Really?* Sometimes those on the right don't just demonstrate their gargantuan egos and sense of entitlement, they also not only reveal, they revel in their absence of ethics/morality/scruples, etc.

[Star2000dancer]

05:01 PM on 06/13/2011

Hmmf! I watched 5 accidents become moms & dads, then have 5 more accidents of their own and so on. None of them had nor have a good life. So keep multilplying the fatherless children, oh, but don't take care of them, or complain. Make them "Pull themselves up by the bootstraps". Hypocrits.

[Star2000dancer]

04:49 PM on 06/13/2011

I was just going to write a series of short stories of illegal abortions I saw and experienced. How they use to do them in a room on a table. How they shoved something long and metal up inside you.

You had to keep it in for 24 hours. I don't know anyone that didn't end up with an infection. I hemmoraged for 6 weeks. Many died. You kept it a secret to your grave anyway. You usually got a glass of wine or a few shots. It was a nightmare. Legal abortions are nightmares too.


You men think it's a day at the beach? I went back to work for 12 hours with that thing in me. Then I drove to Boston. I do not know how I lived. I was told I was a month and a half. I was 51/2 months it turned out. I just remeber being so infected, that they could not even tell if I was pregnant at the hospital. I was give antibiotics. I screamed at the top of my lungs for over 8 hours.

Men have no right to discuss this procedure. Go talk about vasectomies,

[eskeeemo]

02:53 PM on 06/28/2011

Especially since men have no consequences to suffer in the event of an unwanted pregnancy. No one is calling them murderers. No one is guilting them about their choices. Nope. They just rut off down the road to the next woman. If these people insist on criminalizing abortion, then they need to make the men involved criminals, too!!

[tracyamanda]

10:15 PM on 06/28/2011

As a woman then, I cannot believe that you did this to your baby. Your baby was fully formed and close to being 'viable' and you aborted him/her! SICKENING! You may have suffered an infection but imagine what your baby must have felt!

[Daryl E Claybrooks]

04:09 PM on 06/13/2011

Ultimately, the government is attempting to take away a right of an individual!!! Let's forget all of that though, everyone likes to have options to their own situation(s). How is this any different? A woman SHOULD have an option such as this. It doesn't mean that it has to be used but it should exist. How would any man feel if he were directed to have a vasectomy? By law? Are women slaves now? Are they state or federal property? This line of law cheapens the existence of humans just as slavery does or human trafficking.

[tAX gURU]

02:09 PM on 06/13/2011

The personhood idea may backfire. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say an individual must allow another individual to literally live inside it.

[Proud Progressive]

12:52 PM on 06/13/2011

One thing that riles me is the total hypocrisy. The Teapublicans seem to want us to return to the values and regulations of the 1920s. They scream and shout about de-regulation and a return to the glorious 'free market' of yesteryear. At the same time they want to regulate sex, childbirth, women's medicine, alcohol, and religion.

Hey! If we are going to go 'free market', if 'free market' is the best possible way to run the country, then let's do it. Remove all laws from the books that deal with victimless crimes. If an abortion clinic can find enough clientel in a town, then it deserves the same level of protection as a bank, or drug store. If there is a market for crack cocaine-license it to ensure purity and let it open in any town or city where there are enough customers. Prostitution-same again, alcohol sales, pronography, you name it, if we really believe that the 'free market' is going to solve our problems, then let's do it, but if we have to pick and choose, then maybe it isn't everything that the TBs crack it up to be.

[Anonymous17]

01:44 PM on 06/13/2011

You just gave some poor bagger a heart attack at the thought....

[NWBrunette]

12:02 PM on 06/13/2011

Wake up America. Stop electing repubs, trolls, win.gnuts, baggers and rush-regurgitators. Except for folks at the tippy top, they are ruining our country. I for one, want it back.

[antmousie]

12:29 PM on 06/13/2011

Me too, but we can only do it if Dems get to the polls and exercise their right (I believe should be an obligation) to vote.

[jabbaciv]

10:58 AM on 06/13/2011

Republicans care a lot about babies until they're born. After that, f*** em. They want medical care, they want an education, they want food, too bad. Better crawl back into that womb if you want Republicans to care about you.

[cyrus417]

10:41 AM on 06/13/2011

Typical politicians, I see what they're doing... They're fixing the deficit... First step, guarantee "Personhood" rights for zygotes.... Second, tax said zygotes! The Republicans and Democrats are working together on this two step bipartisan action. lol

[Ian Matteson]

12:07 AM on 06/13/2011

The entire premise of abortion rights rest on a single powerful principle: No human being has he right to love inside another human being against their will. Period.

As the fetus is physiologically dependent on the connection it has to its mother, it cannot be removed without rendering it deceased. The problem though is that rights are accorded only to physiologically separate entities, meaning independent human beings that do not require a physiological connection in order for their survival. Once a child is born, it is merely physically or socially dependent on any adult human caregiver, the mother is not necessary at all. Even a coma or trauma victim is only ever socially dependent on the presence of trained medical staff, but not any physiological connection to them. He may require a physiological connection to a medical device that is needed to keep him alive, but such a device is mechanical, and therefor devoid of any reasonable claim to rights. Requiring a mother to host the presence of an unwanted physiologically dependent fetus is a gross violation of personal autonomy of the highest magnitude.

The right to life claims are founded purely on the emotional appeal that abortion is wrong. They use melodramatic statements such as 'you're killing babies' in order to sway an unintelligent crowd. From an ethical and legal standpoint, a fetus has no overriding claim to the mother's body. Case closed.

[VictoriasNoSecret]

01:40 AM on 06/17/2011

"Case closed?" Hardly!

Try telling that to any medical professional, with the exception of abortionists.

Doctors and nurses take an oath, and to keep it brief, I'll just refer to the part that reads "do no harm." They pledge to do no harm. And I assure you, ending life, regardless of the stage, is doing harm.

Try preserving and saving life for 30 years and then have such bunk posted by people who are expressing opinion as if it was a fact. How many deliveries have you witnessed? How many women have you tried to console several years after they had aborted and now have deep regrets? Decisions made under stress and possibly the sense that it has to be decided in a hurry isn't conducive to making decisions that a person is comfortable with for a lifetime.

It would be far better to put such energy into not getting pregnant in the first place, but if responsibility can't be relied on, use the morning after pill, not abortion as your means of birth control.

[Ian Matteson]

10:05 AM on 06/17/2011

So you presume to dictate these women's decisions, purely because you feel that what they are doing is a mistake? Your 'counter' has nothing to do with the context of my initial argument. You ignored the entire premise of the legal status of the fetus, and instead chose to mis-quote the Oath (Do no harm is in the Corpus Hippocraticum, not the Oath). And being the husband of an OB/GYN, I do believe I have quite a bit of insight into the field in general from lengthy in depth discussions with a practicing physician. The AMA has a code of ethics, but there is, in fact, no version of the Hippocratic Oath that the AMA espouses or promotes. Some interesting facts about present varying Oaths include:

1. In 1993, 98% of schools administered some form of the Oath.

2. In 1928, only 26% of schools administered some form of the Oath.

3. Only 1 school used the original Hippocratic Oath.

4. 68 schools used versions of the original Hippocratic Oath.

5. 100% of current Oaths pledge a commitment to patients.

6. Only 43% vow to be accountable for their actions.

7. 14% include a prohibition against euthanasia.

8. Only 11% invoke a diety.

9. 8% prohibit abortion.

10. Only 3% prohibit sexual contact with patients.

The Oath is not binding in any way shape or form, merely a traditional invocation of the Healing Gods (in it's original context).

[tracyamanda]

10:20 PM on 06/28/2011

Taking the morning after pill would be the responsible thing to do, however we all know that most women who turn to abortion aren't the most responsible to begin with.

[tiredofthesameoldstuff]

11:54 PM on 06/12/2011

Ever notice the pro-lifers who claim that woman cannot become pregnant by rape or that is shockingly rare can never back up that claim?

They like the majority of people do not know that numerous studies that questioned how likely a woman would become by one act of rape versus say a one act of consensual sex showed that rape was more likely to get a woman pregnant.

Show every pro-lifer this article from the scientific magazine New Scientist issue: 23rd June 2001

"A SINGLE act of rape may be more than twice as likely to make a woman pregnant as a single act of consensual sex."
" Previous studies found that rates of pregnancy resulting from rape could be anything up to 30 per cent, compared to a 2 to 4 per cent chance of getting pregnant from a single act of consensual sex."
"some surveys suggest that less than 1 per cent of rapists are convicted in the US"

[synergie]

01:10 PM on 06/13/2011

*ahem* anti-Choicer if you please, let's not feed into their numerous delusions.

They do not care about reality, facts, science, studies or the truth, merely their delusions.

[tracyamanda]

10:22 PM on 06/28/2011

Only 1 % of abortions are due to rape. Even if a rape occurs, plan B is usually given to the woman right away to prevent pregnancy.

[synergie]

11:27 PM on 06/28/2011

Due to reported rapes, one of the most under-reported crimes in existence. Plan B is only effective within a very narrow time period, once implantation occurs, an abortion must be induced. So when you put those facts together, it's not so cut and dry is it?

Also, let's look at the types of rape out there, the ones that result from a designer drug in which the victim does not know that a rape has occurred, that leads to delayed reporting (if at all) and that pesky window, and then the failure rate of Plan B and various other Emergency contraceptives.

I'm sure you're picking up on my point now, these statistics are not hard and fast, and they don't take into account the reality on the ground, which is that unwanted, unplanned pregnancies occur, and plan B either may not be effective or may not be given in time for various reasons. We won't even go into the difficulty of getting one's hands on plan B in some areas.

[subcon]

11:30 PM on 06/12/2011

i love how the geriatric ol' party wants to protect a cell (zygote) that is invisible to the naked eye, but once that cell grows/divides, sees light, and breathes air, all support falls to the wayside. they don't want businesses to be over-regul­ated, but they want to over-regul­ate women? they want emissions controls to go away, but more control over women? they believe in more individual freedoms, but less freedom for women? they want to cut back on welfare and other social programs, but want women to give birth and care for those children, even if they are ill-equipp­ed to do so? they vehemently oppose socialism, but believe in the fascist control over a woman's choice?

in this day and age of falling home prices, job losses, soaring fuel, food, and education costs, why are we still stuck on this decades-ol­d (centuries­-old?) debate?

they ran on a platform promising to create jobs and rebuild the economy. if they think they can do that from the inside of a uterus, this country is in worse shape than previously thought.

[Haight]

11:57 PM on 06/12/2011

fanned

[jabbaciv]

11:00 AM on 06/13/2011

It's funny how people like you claim to value life, but then make it clear that you don't value life at all.

Truth is, the anti-abortion movement is about controlling women, and people like you prove that.

[prestonsturges]

11:05 PM on 06/12/2011

Obviously, tackiling this simple issue is easier then trying to create jobs in this economy. First things first, right?

[Star2000dancer]

05:02 PM on 06/13/2011

Fanned comment. Everything that was promised could have been passed in the 1st year.

[hollyann1963]

08:06 PM on 06/12/2011

I know this is a stretch from the point we are trying to make and may upset some, but I am trying to make a point. What if these "pro-life" people were told they had cancer and they could not have surgery to remove it because it was alive inside them and was meant to be there? Would they accept the fact that they had no choice in the way the rest of their life is going to go? Or would they try to cure it themselves? Or would they fight for sanitary, professional care? I'm sorry but some things are between physician and patient. Don't let one penny of tax money pay for it, if that makes you sleep at night. But don't deny ANYONE medical services.

[clconcepts]

08:10 AM on 06/13/2011

medical services for something that can be avoided....yea right

[tiredofthesameoldstuff]

12:48 PM on 06/13/2011

So genetic abnormalities or other birth defects can be avoided? Rape can be avoided with 100% efficency?

[synergie]

01:17 PM on 06/13/2011

Sure thing, next up no medical service for traffic accidents, gun shot wounds, smokers etc. etc.

[tracyamanda]

10:32 PM on 06/28/2011

Yeah-thats a bit of a stretch. How DARE you compare a cancerous tumour to that of a baby! My father died of cancer and for you to even make that comparison is sickening. There is nothing innocent and wonderful about cancer, it ravages and destroys. A baby is a wonderful, amazing, life who is innocent.