Republicans Confirm: We Will Not Back Down on Hyde, No Tax-Funded Abortions

GOP lawmakers and pro-life groups are strongly pushing back against a suggestion by President Donald Trump Tuesday that House Republicans should be “a little flexible” during health care legislation negotiations on the Hyde Amendment, a bipartisan provision protecting tax dollars from funding abortions that has been renewed annually for the last 50 years.

During the president’s remarks at a day-long House Republican policy meeting, Trump discussed the possibility of a potential health care bill that could include a “health care account” that would “let the money go directly to the people.” Then he added, “You have to be a little flexible on Hyde, you know that. You gotta be a little flexible. You gotta work something … we’re all big fans of everything. But you have to have flexibility.”

Republican lawmakers were quick to express shock and dismay in reaction to the president’s remarks. “I almost fell out of my chair,” one told Politico. Others like Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) were more direct. “I’m not flexible on the value of every child’s life. Children are valuable, and so I’d have to get up to the context of what he meant by that,” he remarked. A senior House Republican aide further reiterated that “Hyde is nonnegotiable for most conservatives. … [C]aving on Hyde is not an option.”

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) also made clear Tuesday that any health care deal that makes its way to the Senate must include Hyde protections in order to have a chance at receiving 60 votes. “Ultimately, we want to ensure that if we do anything, it’s done in a way that reforms these programs and protects them, and ensures that those dollars aren’t being used to go against the practice that’s been in place for the last 50 years,” he stated.

Meanwhile, pro-life organizations strongly defended the Hyde Amendment in reaction to Trump’s remarks. “For decades, opposition to taxpayer funding of abortion and support for the Hyde Amendment has been an unshakeable bedrock principle and a minimum standard in the Republican Party,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement Tuesday. “To suggest Republicans should be ‘flexible’ is an abandonment of this decades-long commitment. If Republicans abandon Hyde, they are sure to lose this November.”

“The voters sent a GOP trifecta to Washington and they expect it to govern like one,” Dannenfelser added. “Giving in to Democrat demands that our tax dollars are used to fund plans that cover abortion on demand until birth would be a massive betrayal.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins further underscored the importance of Hyde in separating taxpayer dollars from morally objectionable procedures. “Abortion and gender experimentation are not health care,” he wrote on X. “The only flexibility needed is for the government to allow taxpayers to get out of the abortion and gender mutilation business.” Perkins elaborated on the issue Wednesday, posting, “At another time of great national divide, President Abraham Lincoln, in his last public address in April of 1865, made clear that, as he addressed reconstruction and the end of slavery, policies can be changed and modified, but moral truth is fixed, saying, ‘Important principles may and must be inflexible.’”

“Nothing is more important than the sanctity of human life, therefore we cannot be flexible on protecting taxpayers from being forced to fund abortion or gender mutilation procedures,” Perkins added.

The Hyde Amendment was first introduced by Illinois Congressman Henry Hyde in 1976, which banned the use of federal funds for most abortions (with exceptions for the life of the mother, rape, or incest). The amendment has been passed by every Congress since its first introduction as a rider on appropriations bills. It is estimated that the Hyde Amendment has saved over 2.6 million babies from abortion.

Trump’s remarks are notably at odds with the solidification of the Hyde Amendment that he himself put in place at the beginning of his second term. An executive order issued on January 24, 2025 entitled “Enforcing the Hyde Amendment” stated that “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.” The order revoked two Biden-era EOs that attempted to expand access to abortion through federal action. In September, the White House highlighted the EO as a “victory for people of faith” through “ending taxpayer funding of abortion.”

The incongruence has left GOP lawmakers like Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) scratching their heads.

“He didn’t get into specifics. I’m not exactly sure what he was thinking along those lines,” Cloud observed during “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” Tuesday. “But … for many of us, this is a matter of faith and conviction, and even I think constitutionally you can talk about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness … these founding principles that our nation was founded on. You can’t have the liberties without guaranteeing the right to life. And so this has been a long standing policy of Congress, and we’ve made great gains on it. … Even those … who would advocate for abortion, many of them agree that there’s no reason why someone should be forced to pay for someone else’s abortion through taxing. So the idea that we need to have federal funds going to fund abortions is a non-starter for a lot of people. I think I heard that in the hallways.”

Cloud went on to contend that while there will likely be significant compromises that will be made between both parties in the effort to pass health care legislation, serious moral issues such as abortion and gender mutilation procedures must never be compromised.

“There’s issues you can come to Congress and certainly some you have to compromise on in the sense of roads or farm policy or those kinds of things,” he acknowledged. “But when it comes to these moral issues, right and wrong, that’s what you got to stick your flag there on the side of what’s right and just. And so I think that’s where we’ll be long term. I think that’s where everybody’s heart is, generally speaking, and so we’ll keep moving in that direction.”

LifeNews Note: Dan Hart writes for the Family Research Council. He is the senior editor of The Washington Stand.

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