On June 30, 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Harris v. McRae and upheld the constitutionality of the Hyde Amendment, which had prohibited federal funding for Medicaid abortions since 1976. Three decades later, Harris v. McRae remains the pro-life movement's most important legal victory since Roe v. Wade created a "right to abortion" in 1973.....
Their achievement, however, is not secure. The Hyde Amendment, although deemed constitutional, still had to be re-enacted in every Congress, every year following Harris v. McRae—a fact of legislative history that raises the most serious questions about the Obama administration's claim that the Hyde Amendment is such "settled law" that it need not be replicated in the various legislative iterations of Obamacare. The administration's "deal" with certain Democratic congressmen to include a Hyde Amendment-type ban on abortion funding through a presidential executive order is the thinnest of barriers—some would say, a non-existent barrier—against claims that abortion is a "necessary" form of health care that requires taxpayer funding. That some Catholic members of Congress and some Catholic health-care advocates have fallen for this sleight-of-hand reflects either grave misunderstanding of the law or bad faith.
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