Tax Lawyer's Blog

The Hyde Amendment - much talked about of late in connection with healthcare reform - prohibits the use of government funds to fund abortion.

Tax Policy Blog’s Gerald Prante poses the following question:

If the Hyde/Stupak Amendment, which says that government should not be directly financing abortions or insurance plans that cover abortion, is good public policy, what about indirect subsidies via the tax system that also lower the costs of abortion at the expense of others?

Here is Prante’s response to his own question:

But aren’t [legislators who support the Stupak Amendment] ignoring huge federal subsidies for abortion through the tax code?

[T]he itemized deduction for medical and dental expenses allows the cost of abortion procedures to be deducted. In other words, the current tax system is indirectly subsidizing abortion procedures, which causes higher tax rates on other income or reduced government spending.

Conservatives often support any type of tax cut as a rule of thumb, but suppose some liberal member of Congress proposed a separate itemized deduction for abortion expenditures – there would be some social conservative outrage. But in fact, we already have such a deduction, and although it’s currently limited (must exceed 7.5% of AGI), some conservatives favor getting rid of this limitation (like Congressman Ron Paul’s proposal) because they see it as a tax cut.

The logic of the Hyde and Stupak Amendments is lost on me. Abortion is clearly a medical procedure and a legal one. As long as it remains legal, I don’t see how or why we should carve out a funding exception for it.

Related Posts:

• Taxing Elective Medical Procedures: Is Abortion Different?
• Tiller’s Killer also a Tax Protester

Bookmark & Share: