LWVUS Joins Letter Urging Congress to Remove Anti-abortion Weldon Amendment from FY25 Budget

The League signed onto a letter to US Congress urging them to ensure that the Weldon Amendment is not included in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 budget. The Weldon Amendment is an appropriations rider that threatens the loss of federal funding for federal agencies and programs or state and local governments that require health insurance plans, health care institutions, or health care professionals to cover, provide, or refer for abortions.

June 7, 2024 

The Honorable Patty Murray 

Chair 

U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations

S-128, The Capitol 

Washington, DC 20510 

The Honorable Tom Cole 

Chair 

U.S. House Committee on Appropriations 

H-307, The Capitol 

Washington, DC 20515 

The Honorable Susan Collins 

Vice Chair 

U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations 

S-146A, The Capitol 

Washington, DC 20510 

The Honorable Rosa DeLauro 

Ranking Member 

U.S. House Committee on Appropriations 

1036 Longworth House Office Building 

Washington, DC 20515 

Dear Chairs Murray and Cole, and Ranking Members Collins and DeLauro: 

We, the undersigned organizations that support reproductive health, rights, and justice, write to urge you to ensure that the harmful Weldon Amendment is not included in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 appropriations package. The Weldon Amendment is a budget rider in the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS) appropriations bill that, for far too long, has allowed personal beliefs, not patient health and the standard of care, to determine the care a patient receives. 

Access to reproductive health care – including abortion – is vital to gender justice. The ability to decide whether and when to become pregnant and parent is crucial to a person’s liberty, equality, and economic security. As our country contends with the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s erroneous decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Congress must act urgently to protect the freedom of all people to control their bodies, lives, and futures. 

The Weldon Amendment Prioritizes Personal Beliefs Over Patient Health 

Since FY 2005, the Weldon Amendment has been attached to the discriminatory Hyde Amendment – a rider that bans the use of certain federal funds to cover abortion, with only very limited exceptions - in the annual Labor-HHS bill.1 While the Weldon Amendment is deceptively written to prohibit “discrimination” against health care entities that refuse to provide, cover, pay for, or refer for abortion, it really allows health care providers — including hospitals and health insurance plans, as well as individual nurses and doctors — to discriminate against patients by denying them the care they need. 

By giving a green light to refusals of abortion care, the Weldon Amendment puts patients’ health and lives in danger, even in states where abortion is legal. A single instance of refusing care can mean a patient never getting the care they need – or receiving it only after enduring significant delays and harm. There are no provisions in Weldon to protect patient access to abortion services. 

The Weldon Amendment is especially harmful because it misuses religion to intimidate states that seek to protect abortion care by threatening critical federal health funding. For example, in December 2020 – during a pandemic – the Trump Administration attempted to strip California of $800 million in federal Medicaid funding annually because state law ensures residents have insurance coverage of abortion. 

Previous Administrations issued rules that relied on Weldon and other refusal of care laws to allow virtually any entity involved in health care – from doctors to schedulers to nurses to ambulance drivers - to deny patients care and even information about care. Fortunately, many harmful provisions of these policies were blocked and reversed, but efforts to expand and weaponize the Weldon Amendment continue. 

Eliminating the Weldon Amendment is not only critical as a matter of policy, it is also popular with voters. This was evident even before the Dobbs decision—a July 2021 poll in battleground congressional districts found that 6 in 10 voters oppose allowing health care providers to refuse treatment to a woman seeking an abortion because of religious or moral beliefs.7 More recently, in a June 2022 poll of likely 2022 voters, the majority opposed the idea that institutions, including insurance companies (66% of respondents), employers (63%), and hospitals (59%), should be able to refuse abortion care based on personal or religious beliefs. Nearly two-thirds recognized that refusal of care laws put patients’ health and lives in danger. 

The need to eliminate the harmful Weldon Amendment is critical in this moment, as states ban abortion and refusals of care worsen, with increasing reports of patients being turned away for essential medical care and urgent medical interventions.9 10 Fortunately, both the House and Senate in FY 2022 and 2023 made historic progress by removing the harmful Weldon and Hyde Amendments from their Labor-HHS bills. Congress must demonstrate its commitment to serve the will of the people by removing the Weldon Amendment permanently from its FY 2025 appropriations bills. 

Sincerely,

See Attached Letter for Signatories