The Trump administration reversed a Biden-era legal opinion from the Department of Justice on Thursday that permitted taxpayer dollars to be used for ancillary services associated with helping someone obtain an abortion, such as transportation costs.
The policy was particularly used in aiding unaccompanied minor migrants to get abortions, according to the Trump administration.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, the Health and Human Services Department took the view that taxpayer dollars – even though prohibited by Congress from being used to pay for abortions directly under the Hyde Amendment – could be used to provide transportation services for patients seeking an abortion. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), charged with interpreting the laws for the president and executive branch agencies, agreed at the time under the Biden administration.
However, that interpretation and opinion have been upended after Trump’s OLC issued a new one Thursday that bars taxpayer funds from going toward any ‘ancillary services’ that might help someone get an abortion.
The 2022 Biden-era OLC opinion formed the basis for HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to use federal funds to help unaccompanied minors obtain transportation and other services in support of getting an abortion, according to the July 11 opinion released Thursday.
‘Current regulations require ORR to ‘ensure that all unaccompanied children in ORR custody… be provided with… access to… family planning services,’ and recognize that ‘transportation across State lines and associated ancillary services’ may be ‘necessary to access’ such ‘family planning services,” the new opinion stated.
‘Where such transportation services are necessary for an individual to obtain an abortion, the associated costs constitute the kind of indirect expense that the post-1993 Hyde Amendment limits,’ the opinion continues. ‘Under current circumstances, interstate transportation expenses could dwarf the cost of the abortion procedure itself. It would thus be inconsistent with longstanding congressional policy – as reflected in the Hyde Amendment’s textual bar on ‘expend[itures] for any abortion’ – for HHS to fund such expenses merely because they do not go directly to the person or entity performing the abortion.’
In 1993, Congress changed the statutory language of the Hyde Amendment, which resulted in years of disputes over the measure’s interpretation.
The new OLC opinion released Thursday argues that the 1993 change expanded the Hyde Amendment to include anything done in service of someone receiving an abortion, not just the abortion itself.
Fox News Digital did not receive a response from the Justice Department prior to publication of this story.
The move to strengthen the Hyde Amendment’s protections follows the president’s Executive Order 14182, instructing agencies to ‘end the forced use of Federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion.’
