WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – The U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued a legal memo rescinding a Biden-era legal judgment that federal funds could be used to facilitate travel for abortions that federal law forbade from being directly subsidized.
As the memo explains, the Biden administration took the position that the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funds to most elective abortions, only applied to money “directly expended for” the “discrete medical procedure” of abortion, and not indirect expenses such as travel expenses. That creative interpretation was part of former President Joe Biden’s “whole-of-government” effort to preserve abortion “access” in the immediate wake of Roe v. Wade’s overturn.
“We agree that the 2022 Opinion took an unduly narrow view of the text of the relevant appropriations rider,” the memo states. “We therefore think it appropriate to withdraw that opinion, which we consider to be inconsistent with the traditional tools of statutory interpretation employed by the Supreme Court and this Office.”
The government’s previous judgment, it explained, dismissed a change made to Hyde’s language in 1993 from funds “used to perform abortions” to funds “expended for any abortion,” finding it irrelevant to whether Hyde only applied to direct medical expenses.
“(W)e conclude that the 2022 Opinion deviated from how courts and this Office analyze statutes when it dissected the phrase ‘expended for any abortion’ into its constituent pieces and gave a narrow, and overly literal, view of each word without adequately considering the phrase as a whole and in context,” the memo says. “Having reexamined the issue, we conclude that the Hyde Amendment is best read to prohibit the use of federal funds to provide ancillary services necessary to receive an abortion. The 2022 Opinion’s contrary conclusion is withdrawn.”
Within weeks of returning to office, President Donald Trump began enforcing the Hyde Amendment (which forbids most federal funds from directly supporting elective abortions), reinstated the Mexico City Policy (which forbids non-governmental organizations from using taxpayer dollars for elective abortions abroad), and cut millions in pro-abortion subsidies by freezing U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spending.
In March, the administration froze Title X “family planning” grants to nonprofits it said violated its executive orders on immigration and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, including Planned Parenthood affiliates in nine states.
Earlier this month, Trump signed his controversial “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (BBB) into law, a wide-ranging policy package that includes a one-year ban on federal tax dollars going through Medicaid to any that provides abortions for reasons other than rape, incest, or supposed threats to the mother’s life. A federal judge temporarily blocked that provision days later in a ruling that is expected to be reversed.
Other Republicans have proposed standalone measures to fully cut off Planned Parenthood’s government funding: the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act, which permanently bans federal funds from being used for abortion; and the Defund Planned Parenthood Act, which disqualifies Planned Parenthood and its affiliates specifically. But they would require 60 votes to make it through the Senate.
