Thursday, November 29, 2007
A Honorable American Moves On [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
NRO has sadly confirmed that Henry Hyde died at around 3 A.M. this morning.
He, of course, was recently a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but his infirmity prevented him from attending the ceremony. His son attended in his place.
A Republican congressman from Illinois for 32 years, he was a statesmen, and was stalwart for life.
As we put it in an editorial earlier this month:
He will be most remembered for the Hyde Amendment. First passed in 1976, when Hyde was new to Washington, it bans the public funding of abortions though Medicaid. The year before it passed, the federal government had financed 300,000 abortions for low-income women. Afterward, this number dropped essentially to zero — the women either found another way to pay for their abortions or chose life for their unborn children. The National Right to Life Committee has estimated, conservatively, that the Hyde Amendment has prevented at least one million abortions. That’s one million Americans who are alive today because of Henry Hyde.
The Hyde Amendment has proven remarkably durable, undergoing only one important revision. In 1993, Congress added rape and incest exceptions to the life-of-the-mother clause that had been in place from the start. It is without question the most important piece of pro-life legislation ever to pass Congress.
R.I.P.
11/29 08:16 AM
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