But Hyde’s true legacy is profoundly personal.

Before the amendment took effect, federal Medicaid funds paid for an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 abortions annually. Congress’s decision to stop using federal tax dollars to pay for most abortions changed the outcomes of countless pregnancies. Children were born who otherwise would not have been. They grew up, built lives, and had children of their own.

Today, they are our neighbors, coworkers, friends, spouses, parents, and grandparents.

Researchers have attempted to measure Hyde’s impact by examining abortion rates, birth rates, Medicaid eligibility, and public funding restrictions. Pro-life scholars estimate that the amendment has saved more than 2.6 million lives. The exact total will always be an estimate, but research indicates that when government funding for abortion is restricted, fewer abortions occur and more children are born.

Even organizations that oppose Hyde acknowledge that funding restrictions can result in women carrying pregnancies to term when they otherwise would have obtained abortions. They present that outcome as an indictment of the policy.

The pro-life movement sees the child.

Every one of those births represents a human life that continued rather than ended — relationships, accomplishments, and love made possible because an abortion did not take place.

The Hyde Amendment does not eliminate every problem confronting a woman facing an unexpected pregnancy, but paying for an abortion does not solve those problems either. It ends the life of the child while leaving the mother to face many of the same circumstances without her baby.

Our responsibility is not merely to prevent public funding of abortion. It is to build a culture in which no woman believes abortion is her only option because she lacks money, support, housing, healthcare, or hope. Protecting Hyde must be accompanied by a commitment to mothers and their children before and after birth.

For five decades, Hyde has established an important boundary: Whatever the status of abortion under federal or state law, taxpayers should not be forced to finance the killing of unborn children.

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Hyde Amendment in Harris v. McRae, rejecting claims that the government’s decision to fund childbirth but not most abortions violated the Constitution.

Hyde has endured through changing presidents, congressional majorities, and decades of legal and political battles. Yet because it remains an appropriations provision rather than permanent law, its protections must be renewed through the federal spending process.

Congress should preserve Hyde and work toward codifying its protections through legislation such as the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act. A policy credited with protecting millions of lives should not remain vulnerable to annual political negotiations.

The debate over Hyde is sometimes framed as a dispute about government budgets. But its greatest contribution cannot be measured in dollars.

It is measured in birthdays.

It is measured in graduations, weddings, careers, friendships, and families. It is measured in the children and grandchildren of those whose lives were protected. And it is measured in all the ordinary days experienced by people who were given the most fundamental opportunity of all: the opportunity to live.

As the Hyde Amendment reaches its 50th anniversary, we should remember Hyde’s legislative achievement and those who defended it across five decades.

TO BE OR NOT TO BE? ABORTION AND THE QUESTION OF MORAL AMBIGUITY

Most of all, we should remember the millions of Americans who are here because of Hyde.

They are its living legacy.

Laura Echevarria is the communications director and press secretary for National Right to Life.