Justice Watch: Documenting the Attack on Reproductive Rights - and How to Fight Back
Today also marks the 37th anniversary of one of the first attempts to restrict reproductive rights: the Hyde Amendment, a law that,bars states from using Medicaid money to fund abortion. Many poor people rely on Medicaid to pay for their health care. So while it’s true that the Hyde Amendment does not, technically, eliminate the right to abortion, it renders that right largely meaningless for the many poor and low-income women who simply cannot afford to pay for an abortion on their own. For such women it amounts to a legislative repeal of a constitutional right.
The late Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill.,
author of the Hyde Amendment
And as we show in Roe at Risk, while the federal government took one of the first steps to cut off access to abortion 37 years ago, states have been following suit ever since. In recent years, some state lawmakers have been transparent in their attempts to deny access to abortion, directly attacking the right with legislation that makes abortion unlawful after a set period of time. Such attempts have taken the shape of bans that begin at twenty-weeks, at twelve weeks or at six weeks.
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