Measuring a Half-Century of Hyde

Policy Department

The data behind the memo

Forty-nine years of Hyde, year by year

Each year, the Charlotte Lozier Institute's estimate of lives saved is valued using the Value of a Statistical Life the federal government applied that year, expressed in 2025 dollars. Hover or tap any year for the full calculation.

• 2,646,474
  Lives saved, 1977 – Sept. 30, 2025 (Charlotte Lozier Institute)
• $19.5T
  Cumulative economic value of those lives, real 2025 dollars
• 2020
  Peak year: 65,855 lives saved, an economic value of $950.1 billion
• $1.5M → $14.2M
  DOT's Value of a Statistical Life, 1990 to 2025 (nominal)

Economic value of lives saved, by year — billions of real 2025 dollars

• Full year
• 2025* partial year, through Sept. 30
• Year under court injunction (1977, 1980)
• Running total (right axis)

The steps in 1990, 1993, 2008 and 2012 are increases in the Value of a Statistical Life that the Department of Transportation itself published; they are part of the government’s method, not changes in the underlying count of lives.

* 2025 covers January 1 through September 30.

Source: AAF Policy Department analysis, applying the U.S. Department of Transportation's Value of a Statistical Life methodology to the Charlotte Lozier Institute's published annual estimates of lives saved by the Hyde Amendment. Pre-1990 VSL figures are constructed using DOT's own stated methodology (CPI-U x real wage growth via BLS Median Usual Weekly Earnings), since DOT issued no VSL guidance before June 1990.

Methodology appendix — year-by-year inputs for the $19.5 trillion estimate

2025 is a partial year, through September 30. † Hyde was under court injunction for large stretches of 1976–1977 and again from February to September 1980 (the McRae injunction), during which the federal government kept funding abortions despite Hyde being law — which is why the Lozier Institute's 1977 and 1980 figures are so low.

All versions of the Hyde Amendment have included, at a minimum, the life-saving exception. The original FY1977 version of the Amendment (P.L. 94-439, § 209) included only the life-saving exception. The FY1979 version (P.L. 95-480, § 210) included three exceptions: (1) the life-saving exception; (2) a rape or incest exception, but only if the rape or incest had been reported promptly to a law enforcement agency or public health service; and (3) an exception for instances in which severe and long-lasting physical health damage to the mother would result if the pregnancy were carried to term, as determined by two physicians.

Like the original version, between FY1981 and FY1993, the Amendment again generally included only the life-saving exception. For FY1994, the rape or incest exception, without a reporting requirement, was reintroduced to the Amendment. The scope of abortions subject to the Amendment has generally included these two exceptions since FY1994.

TOPLINE: For nearly fifty years, the Hyde Amendment has kept federal tax dollars from subsidizing abortion, protecting the conscience of American taxpayers who object to underwriting the termination of an innocent human life. Using the government’s way of pricing changes in mortality risk, we have developed a first-of-its-kind estimate of the economic value of the lives Hyde has saved since enactment: $19.5 trillion.

What the Hyde Amendment Does

• Renewed annually as a rider on appropriations bills, Hyde prohibits the use of taxpayer funds for abortion in Medicaid, Medicare, and other programs covering federal employees, except in cases that involve rape, incest, or the mother’s life.
• Enacted in 1976 with support from an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, the amendment is named after its original sponsor: pro-life champion Rep. Henry Hyde.
• Even with Hyde in place, 21 states still provide taxpayer funding for abortion.
• Most Americans, including most women, oppose taxpayer subsidies for abortion.

Hyde and the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL)

• Federal agencies use VSL to weigh changes to government policy against what society is willing to pay to reduce the risk of death ($1.5M in 1990, $14.2M in 2025).
• The Transportation Department has not published VSL numbers prior to 1990, so for those years we calculated VSL figures using the same official formula.
• One-in-four women who would have gotten an abortion under Medicaid chose life when that funding was unavailable due to Hyde, according to Guttmacher Institute.
• Using VSL, along with the Charlotte Lozier Institute’s year-by-year calculation of the lives saved, we are able to estimate the gross cumulative economic benefit of Hyde.
• VSL estimates vary by agency (EPA estimates would result in even larger figures).
• As noted in the original 2022 Joint Economic Committee report that this memo updates and expands upon, abortion is principally a moral, not economic, issue.

The Blessings of a Half-Century of Hyde

• 2,646,474 lives have been saved thanks to Hyde, from 1977 to September 2025.
• That’s roughly the population of the third-largest city in America: Chicago.
• The economic value of lives saved by Hyde comes to 52% of national debt at the time of the most recent data (September 2025).
• In 2020, Hyde set a single-year record: preventing approximately 65,855 abortions, representing an economic value of $950.1 billion.

The Future of Hyde

• While Hyde’s impact has fallen by nearly half since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and pro-life protections have taken effect in red states (rendering Hyde moot), its lifesaving role in other states is more critical than ever.
• In states that still permit and fund abortion, Hyde must be asserted with renewed vigor as an essential firewall against taxpayer complicity in abortion.
• Conservatives must resist efforts to repeal, or be “flexible” on Hyde, which is under heavy fire from the left and growing factions on the right in a post-Dobbs era.