Last week, President Donald Trump reversed the Biden administration’s radical agenda of using federal taxpayer dollars to fund abortion by signing a memorandum that reinstates the Hyde Amendment and the Mexico City Policy. The Hyde Amendment bars taxpayer dollars from being used to fund elective abortions domestically and the Mexico City Policy prohibits federal funding for international organizations that advance abortion abroad, such as International Planned Parenthood and United Nations Population Fund.
The Hyde Amendment, first enacted in 1976, is an annual legislative provision included in federal spending bills to prevent American taxpayer dollars from directly funding abortions except in the rare cases of rape, incest, or to save the mother’s life. According to a 2016 report by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the amendment is estimated to have saved more than 2 million lives by its 40th anniversary. President Trump’s memorandum stated that the Biden administration circumvented this “longstanding commonsense policy” with two executive orders of his own that categorized abortion as “heath care” making abortion facilities eligible for federal aid, and then “imposed a whole-of-government effort” to embed taxpayer dollars into funding elective abortion.
President Trump’s Hyde Amendment executive order specifically revokes these two Biden orders by removing abortion from the category of “health care” and stops the government-wide effort to promote and fund abortion with taxpayer dollars.
The executive order reads, “For nearly five decades, the Congress has annually enacted the Hyde Amendment and similar laws that prevent Federal funding of elective abortion, reflecting a longstanding consensus that American taxpayers should not be forced to pay for that practice. However, the previous administration disregarded this established, commonsense policy by embedding forced taxpayer funding of elective abortions in a wide variety of Federal programs. It is the policy of the United States, consistent with the Hyde Amendment, to end the forced use of Federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion.”
Similarly, President Trump signed an additional order reinstating the pro-life Mexico City Policy that Biden had halted. The federal directive was put in place by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 at the International Conference on Population in Mexico City, which led to the policy’s name, and prohibits American taxpayer funds from heading overseas to foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that perform or promote abortion. Ever since, the policy has been rescinded by every Democrat president and reinstated by every Republican president. In President Trump’s first term, this same action defunded International Planned Parenthood and other organizations saving American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
The memorandum reads, “The President’s policy from 2017 is reinstated to ensure that no U.S. taxpayer money supports foreign organizations that perform or actively promote abortion in other nations.”
Under the policy, U.S. government global health contracts must stipulate any financial assistance will not be used to perform or promote abortion.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “Through these pro-life executive actions, President Trump is protecting the most vulnerable and returning the federal government to the side of pro-life. American taxpayer dollars should never be used to murder innocent life.”
