This paper provides a history of the Hyde Amendment and summarizes the substantial body of academic and policy research which shows that the Hyde Amendment lowers abortion rates. It uses this research to estimate the number of lives saved by the Hyde Amendment since it was first signed into law in 1976. Our estimates indicate that as of July 2020, the Hyde Amendment has saved approximately 2,409,311 lives.

Decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court rarely attract much public interest. One news cycle and a few op-eds are probably the norm for even the most important and sweeping decisions. But one Supreme Court decision eclipses all others in the past century. Far from being forgotten, in the almost 50 years since Roe v. Wade announced that the “constitutional” right to privacy encompasses a woman’s decision to abort her child, including late-term abortions, its fame (or infamy) just keeps growing.

Abortion advocates have always vehemently opposed laws that limit taxpayer funding for abortion. The Hyde Amendment, which Congress has applied to the annual appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services for nearly all of the last 45 years, draws their greatest contempt, because it prohibits the use of federal and state matching Medicaid funds for most abortions—and has likely saved 2.4 million lives. However, for many years the abortion industry grudgingly tolerated lawmakers who supported the Hyde Amendment, for principled or pragmatic reasons, as long as they remained in lockstep with the rest of their abortion agenda.