HHS to review programs to prevent taxpayer funding for abortions

CNA Staff, Jan 29, 2025 / 14:35 pm (CNA).

Acting Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Dr. Dorothy Fink announced this week that the agency will review its budget to ensure that taxpayer funds are not being used to pay for or promote elective abortions.

In a Monday statement, Fink noted that the agency would ensure that the Hyde Amendment — which prevents taxpayer funding for abortion — is enforced.

“For nearly 50 years, the Hyde Amendment has protected taxpayer funds administered by the department from paying for elective abortion,” Fink said.

“The department will reevaluate all programs, regulations, and guidance to ensure federal taxpayer dollars are not being used to pay for or promote elective abortion, consistent with the Hyde Amendment,” Fink added.

The announcement follows President Donald Trump’s Jan. 24 executive order on enforcing the Hyde Amendment, an order that revoked two Biden-era orders that loosened restrictions around abortion funding.

For instance, Biden’s Executive Order 14079 recategorized abortion as “health care,” enabling Medicaid funding to pay for travel costs for abortions, according to a White House Jan. 25 “Fact Sheet.” Another Biden order “imposed a whole-of-government effort to promote and fund abortion and to politicize enforcement of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act,” the White House noted.

Fink also highlighted the importance of enforcing conscience rights and religious liberty.

“The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through the Office for Civil Rights, is tasked with enforcement of many of our nation’s laws that protect the fundamental and unalienable rights of conscience and religious exercise,” Fink said. “It shall be a priority of the department to strengthen enforcement of these laws.”

“To this end, the Office for Civil Rights will reevaluate its regulations and guidance pertaining to federal laws on conscience and religious exercise,” Fink continued.

Fink also praised the Trump administration’s decision to rejoin “the historic Geneva Consensus Declaration on Promoting Women’s Health and Strengthening the Family,” a pledge the U.S. withdrew from under the Biden-Harris administration that states there is no international right to abortion.

The declaration, Fink noted, promotes “better health for women,” “the preservation of human life,” and the “strengthening of the family as the foundational unit of society” as well as the protection of “every nation’s national sovereignty.”

“The Office of Global Affairs will support the secretary of state in restoring the United States’ leadership in the Geneva Consensus Declaration coalition,” Fink said.

The “review will be conducted consistent with guidance issued by the Office of Management and Budget,” Fink noted.

The White House on Wednesday announced it had rescinded an OMB request to agencies to pause funding for all nongovernmental organizations to ensure they are in line with the president’s recent flurry of executive orders. The announcement followed a federal judge’s temporary block on the freeze on federal funding.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Majorie Dannenfelser welcomed Trump’s decision to rejoin the declaration in a Friday statement, saying that “thanks to President Trump, we are standing with the international community for life again.”

“The Geneva Consensus Declaration is a landmark achievement between the United States, spearheaded by President Trump during his first administration, and more than 30 nations affirming the right to life and rejecting abortion on demand,” Dannenfelser said. “One after another, President Trump’s great pro-life victories are being restored, and this is just the beginning.”