Picture this: you’re sitting in a nice restaurant. The people at the next table spare no expense, ordering the most expensive items on the menu. That’s their choice. But when the waiter brings you the bill and says, “You didn’t order any of this — but you’re paying for it anyway,” you’d rightly be outraged.
As offensive as that would be, it pales in comparison to the injustice of forcing taxpayers to fund the killing of the unborn. This is not merely a policy dispute; it is a profound moral wrong. It compounds one injustice upon another — first, the taking of innocent human life, and then compelling citizens to finance an act that violates the moral law of the author of life.
That is precisely why the late Congressman Henry Hyde successfully crafted what became known as the Hyde Amendment in 1976. Hyde, an annual appropriations rider adopted every year since, established the only enduring common ground on abortion policy: Americans should not be forced to fund an act many believe is morally abhorrent — the taking of an unborn child’s life.
Despite decades of pro-abortion propaganda and cultural indoctrination, a clear majority of Americans — 57% — still oppose being compelled to fund abortions. Among Republican voters, that opposition rises to 83%. In today’s fractured political climate, few issues command that level of agreement, even within a single party.
That is what makes President Trump’s call this week for Republicans to be “a little flexible on Hyde” during negotiations over Obamacare subsidies so stunning. Retreating from the party’s long-standing defense of the unborn is not pragmatism; it is the shortest path to becoming a permanent minority.
At issue is the Affordable Care Act itself, which was deceptively designed to evade Hyde’s protections when it was passed in 2010 without Republican support. The COVID-era subsidies, again pushed solely by Democrats during the Biden administration, funneled even more money into an already failing system under the pretext of emergency relief. What is now unmistakably clear is that the so-called Affordable Care Act is, in fact, unaffordable.
Some Republicans have signaled a willingness to support a short-term extension while Congress works to overhaul the system, but only if Hyde protections are included. Democrats have flatly rejected that condition, insisting that abortion coverage remain mandatory. That position has been, and must remain, a red line for Republicans.
When we consider the moral truth of the sanctity of human life in the womb — and the equally important right of citizens not to be forced to finance its destruction — we are reminded of the words of another president at a moment of national consequence who said: “Important principles may, and must, be inflexible.”
Those were among the last public words spoken by Abraham Lincoln, and those words still speak today.
