{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=415879", "Washington Examiner Op-Ed by Rep. Smith'Over 2 million people are alive today because of one law \u2014 and Washington wants to kill it'", "2026-09-30", "2026", "2026-09", "Republican", "House", "NJ", "Christopher H. Smith", "S000522", "chrissmith.house.gov", "chrissmith", "https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentquery.aspx", "scraper", "By Rep. Chris Smith\n\nPublished September 30, 2026 at 5:00am ET\n\nFifty years ago \u2014 on Sept. 30, 1976 \u2014 Congress first enacted an amendment offered by the late, great Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois to prohibit federal Medicaid funds from being used to subsidize the killing of unborn children by abortion.\n\nDuring debate in the House, Henry said: \u201cAn innocent, defenseless human life, in a caring and humane society deserves better than to be flushed down a toilet or burned in an incinerator.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe promise of America,\u201d he said, \u201cis that life is not just for the privileged, the planned, or the perfect.\u201d\n\nAccording to Dr. Michael J. New of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, approximately 2.7 million people are alive today \u2014 and each year, another 60,000 evade the irreversible consequence of abortion and survive \u2014 because of Henry Hyde\u2019s amendment.\n\nThanks to Henry Hyde, 2.7 million people \u2014 who would have otherwise been aborted \u2014 have experienced the joys and challenges of life and opportunities to thrive.\n\nBeginning in 1981, I had the honor of serving alongside Henry Hyde in the House of Representatives.\n\nHe was brilliant, compassionate, tenacious, incredibly articulate, self-effacing, a man of great wisdom and humor \u2014 a one-of-a-kind lawmaker \u2014 who, to this day, remains the greatest defender of unborn children and their mothers.\n\nHe was so good at debate, you always wanted him to be your closer.\n\nHenry believed sound moral principles and courage should inform and guide the decisions we make in government, and he addressed the 1990 class of incoming freshmen members of Congress with these words:\n\n\u201cThis may sound odd, even ironic. You are here in the flush of victory. And yet it is precisely now that I ask you to contemplate the possibility of defeat \u2014 perhaps even the necessity of defeat. \u2026 If you don\u2019t know the principle, or the policy, for which you are willing to lose your office, then you are going to do damage here.\u201d\n\nNo one wants to lose an election. However, we do great \u201cdamage\u201d when we sacrifice our core convictions on the altar of political expediency.\n\nIt\u2019s truly sad that far too many politicians \u2014 who know better \u2014 have abandoned unborn children and their mothers to the abortionists for political gain or upward advancement.\n\nThe Hyde Amendment is under relentless legislative assault. Yet polling data consistently reflect what the 2026 Marist Poll found: A significant majority of people do not support taxpayer funding for abortion.\n\nAs pro-life advocates work to replace abortion violence \u2014 the culture of death \u2014 with compassion and empathy for women and children, the Hyde Amendment continues to stand as one of the most important human rights policies of the past 50 years.\n\nHowever, the billion-dollar abortion industry continues to cleverly market the cheap sophistry of choice, while going to extraordinary lengths to downplay the suffering and pain experienced by the battered baby victims in the womb \u2014 as well as the coercion or pressure exerted on the mother to end the life of her unborn child.\n\nThe abortion pill \u2014 mifepristone \u2014 kills the baby by starving the child to death, while other methods of abortion dismember and decapitate the baby.\n\nWe now know that mifepristone is extremely dangerous to women. The Ethics and Public Policy Center conducted the largest-known study of the abortion pill ever, and is based on analysis of data from an all-payer insurance claims database.\n\nThis database includes 865,727 prescribed mifepristone abortions from 2017 to 2023, and found that 10.93% of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion.\n\nThe real-world rate of serious adverse events following mifepristone abortions is at least 22 times as high as the summary figure of \u201cless than 0.5%\u201d in clinical trials reported on the drug label.\n\nSomeday, future generations will look back and wonder how and why such a seemingly smart and enlightened society could have permitted and perpetrated the violent deaths of more than 66 million children by abortion, often with government authorization, enabling, and subsidy.\n\nHistory will note, however, the struggle of Henry Hyde and the millions of pro-life advocates who joined him in his quest to protect and defend the rights of the weakest and most vulnerable.", 1, "2026-10-01T11:23:28Z", "2026-10-01T11:25:15Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=415879"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.0003391653299332, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}