Washington Examiner Op-Ed by Rep. Smith'Over 2 million people are alive today because of one law — and Washington wants to kill it'

By Rep. Chris Smith Published September 30, 2026 at 5:00am ET Fifty years ago — on Sept. 30, 1976 — Congress first enacted an amendment offered by the late, great Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois to prohibit federal Medicaid funds from being used to subsidize the killing of unborn children by abortion. During debate in the House, Henry said: “An innocent, defenseless human life, in a caring and humane society deserves better than to be flushed down a toilet or burned in an incinerator.” “The promise of America,” he said, “is that life is not just for the privileged, the planned, or the perfect.” According to Dr. Michael J. New of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, approximately 2.7 million people are alive today — and each year, another 60,000 evade the irreversible consequence of abortion and survive — because of Henry Hyde’s amendment. Thanks to Henry Hyde, 2.7 million people — who would have otherwise been aborted — have experienced the joys and challenges of life and opportunities to thrive. Beginning in 1981, I had the honor of serving alongside Henry Hyde in the House of Representatives. He was brilliant, compassionate, tenacious, incredibly articulate, self-effacing, a man of great wisdom and humor — a one-of-a-kind lawmaker — who, to this day, remains the greatest defender of unborn children and their mothers. He was so good at debate , you always wanted him to be your closer. Henry believed sound moral principles and courage should inform and guide the decisions we make in government, and he addressed the 1990 class of incoming freshmen members of Congress with these words: “This may sound odd, even ironic. You are here in the flush of victory. And yet it is precisely now that I ask you to contemplate the possibility of defeat — perhaps even the necessity of defeat. … If you don’t know the principle, or the policy, for which you are willing to lose your office, then you are going to do damage here.” No one wants to lose an election. However, we do great “damage” when we sacrifice our core convictions on the altar of political expediency. It’s truly sad that far too many politicians — who know better — have abandoned unborn children and their mothers to the abortionists for political gain or upward advancement. The Hyde Amendment is under relentless legislative assault. Yet polling data consistently reflect what the 2026 Marist Poll found: A significant majority of people do not support taxpayer funding for abortion. As pro-life advocates work to replace abortion violence — the culture of death — with compassion and empathy for women and children, the Hyde Amendment continues to stand as one of the most important human rights policies of the past 50 years. However, the billion-dollar abortion industry continues to cleverly market the cheap sophistry of choice, while going to extraordinary lengths to downplay the suffering and pain experienced by the battered baby victims in the womb — as well as the coercion or pressure exerted on the mother to end the life of her unborn child. The abortion pill — mifepristone — kills the baby by starving the child to death, while other methods of abortion dismember and decapitate the baby. We now know that mifepristone is extremely dangerous to women. The Ethics and Public Policy Center conducted the largest-known study of the abortion pill ever, and is based on analysis of data from an all-payer insurance claims database. This database includes 865,727 prescribed mifepristone abortions from 2017 to 2023, and found that 10.93% of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion. The real-world rate of serious adverse events following mifepristone abortions is at least 22 times as high as the summary figure of “less than 0.5%” in clinical trials reported on the drug label. Someday, future generations will look back and wonder how and why such a seemingly smart and enlightened society could have permitted and perpetrated the violent deaths of more than 66 million children by abortion, often with government authorization, enabling, and subsidy. History will note, however, the struggle of Henry Hyde and the millions of pro-life advocates who joined him in his quest to protect and defend the rights of the weakest and most vulnerable. Chris Smith is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, serving New Jersey’s 4th Congressional District. This article was published online on September 30, 2026 and can be found at https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/op-eds/4745667/hyde-amendment-2-million-lives-saved/