The Hyde Amendment: A Discriminatory Ban on Insurance Coverage of Abortion

Reproductive rights are under attack. Will you help us fight back with facts?

Abortion is essential health care and should be affordable for everyone, regardless of income, zip code or source of insurance. But the Hyde Amendment prohibits federal funding for abortion, preventing people enrolled in Medicaid and other public programs in most states from using their health insurance to cover abortion care. The Hyde Amendment disproportionately impacts people already facing systemic barriers to care, particularly Black, Indigenous and other people of color. To ensure it is affordable, abortion should be covered by health insurance—whether public or private and wherever a person lives—which means the Hyde Amendment and related abortion coverage bans must be eliminated.

How the Hyde Amendment works

• The Hyde Amendment prohibits federal funds from covering abortion services for people enrolled in Medicaid, Medicare and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). It is a discriminatory policy that Congress has included in annual spending bills since 1976.
• The Hyde Amendment currently affects people in 34 states and the District of Columbia. The remaining 16 states provide their own funding for abortion coverage for people enrolled in Medicaid.
• One of the effects of systemic racism in this country is that most women of color are disproportionately likely to have low incomes and to be insured through Medicaid. Among women aged 15–49, 29% of Black women and 25% of Hispanic women were enrolled in Medicaid in 2019, compared with 15% of White women and 12% of Asian women.
• Half of all women aged 15–49 with incomes below the federal poverty level were insured through Medicaid in 2019; for Black women in that group, the proportion was 62%.
• Across the 34 states and the District of Columbia where it currently has an impact, the Hyde Amendment leaves 7.8 million women aged 15–49 with Medicaid coverage but without abortion coverage. Half of those affected are women of color.
• Another cruel consequence of the Hyde Amendment is that related bans withhold abortion coverage from millions of people who obtain their health coverage or care through other federal programs, including federal employees, military personnel and veterans, people imprisoned or detained by the federal government, Native Americans, Peace Corps volunteers and people with low incomes living in the District of Columbia.

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