Trump Admin Repeals Biden's Funding of Abortion Travel

Calvin Freiburger : Jul 21, 2025
LifeSiteNews.com

"...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 The 2022 Opinion's contrary conclusion is withdrawn." -from the DOJ memo

(Washington, DC) — [LifeSiteNews.com] The US 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. (Image: Pixabay)

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 The 2022 Opinion's contrary conclusion is withdrawn."... Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

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