Explainer: The GOP Spending Bill & Abortion
Everything we know so far
This past weekend, you probably heard a lot about the 40-day government shutdown—the longest in history, FYI—and the Republican spending bill that just passed the Senate. You also probably heard about backdoor efforts by Republicans to use that bill to attack abortion rights.
All of this is way too complicated, so we’re going to break it down. (And feel free to leave us questions in the comments.)
On Sunday night, the Senate advanced a spending bill that will likely reopen the government—but at significant cost. No, the bill doesn’t impact abortion (yet)—but it tees up a broader fight over abortion coverage we expect to see in the near future.
Democrats have spent the last month holding the line on one basic demand: extending Affordable Care Act tax credits that lower premiums for ACA plans. Those tax credits—created under the Biden administration during COVID—are set to expire at the end of this year. The new spending bill doesn’t extend them, meaning millions could see their health care costs rise.
Since the bill doesn’t guarantee the extension of those credits, Congress could vote on this next month. But even that isn’t guaranteed, because GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson said Monday night that he won’t commit to holding that vote at all.
As Reproductive Freedom for All’s Mini Timmaraju put it:
“Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans shut down the government, and then used the most vulnerable people among us as bargaining chips so they could raise health care costs for millions of Americans.”
So, what does all of this have to do with abortion?
Over the weekend, Oregon’s Sen. Ron Wyden warned that Republicans were pushing for a national backdoor abortion ban. That’s because behind closed doors, some Republicans have spent the past few weeks pushing for a spending bill that would block ACA plans from covering abortion—even in pro-choice states that explicitly protect abortion rights or require insurance plans to cover abortion. (Sound familiar?)
This is appallingly extreme. Remember, while the Hyde Amendment blocks federal dollars from being used for abortion, some ACA marketplace plans still offer abortion coverage because certain states use their own funding to pay for it. Twelve states even require marketplace plans to cover abortion. (KFF has a map of state-by-state policies.)
So, yes, what Republicans were pushing would function as a backdoor ban—preventing patients in pro-choice states from accessing abortion by stripping away their coverage.
Those provisions didn’t make it into the final bill, but not because Republicans backed down. They simply refused to negotiate on the ACA credits at all. The so-called ‘compromise’ bill reopens the government and reinstates federal workers, but it does almost nothing else. That means ACA plans are on the brink of rising substantially.
Where does that leave us?
If Congress revisits the ACA credits in December—and that’s a big if—we can expect the fight over abortion coverage to bleed into that vote, and for Republicans to try to attach those abortion restrictions.
If they succeed in limiting abortion coverage under the ACA, it would unleash chaos: conflicting state laws, new bureaucratic hurdles, and—experts warn—higher insurance costs for everyone.
Let’s be clear: The only reason this spending bill doesn’t attack abortion is that Republicans refused to negotiate on the ACA. If they did, to Wyden’s point, they clearly intended to ram through attacks on abortion—at the same time that Republicans’ “Big, Beautiful Bill” is already shuttering clinics across the country.
Remember, that broader push is already happening: Abortion, Every Day reported just last month that Sen. Josh Hawley introduced a bill to ban abortion coverage under ACA plans even in pro-choice states. And there’s a clear appetite for this extremism: among Congressional Republicans, and influential anti-abortion groups that have praised Hawley’s bill for eliminating “state-level workarounds and separate billing schemes.” So much for ‘leaving abortion to the states.’
The fight over what Wyden called a backdoor national ban is already here. Republicans just hate affordable health care so much they’d rather punt this matter until next time than extend ACA tax credits.
Center for Reproductive Rights’ Liz Wagner told us, “This is the same old playbook: if extremists can’t ban abortion outright, they’ll make it impossible to access.”
We can’t let that happen. As abortion rights groups have made clear, attacks on access have to be Democrats’ line in the sand. As Timmaraju said, “‘Negotiating’ on our reproductive freedom is unacceptable.” We couldn’t agree more.
When you give a bully your lunch money today he will be back tomorrow you can count on it.
"[A]ttacks on access have to be Democrats’ line in the sand. As Timmaraju said, “‘Negotiating’ on our reproductive freedom is unacceptable.” We couldn’t agree more." Should it be Democrats' line in the sand? Absolutely. But let's look at history. For decades, Democrats have promised so much and delivered so little, e.g. codify Roe. Obama promised and soon forgot all about it, teeing up the Supreme Court decision overturning our right to control our own bodies and futures. Can we please not make that mistake again? Relying on Democrats to protect our rights has been a major factor that got us here. BTW it wasn't Democratic electeds that won the right to abortion, it was the women's liberation movement, the Second Wave, whatever you call it - it was angry women demanding our rights. Now we have a violently male supremacist regime controlling all 3 branches of the federal government and top Dems are AWOL. We are going to have to rise again, for our rights and against this whole fascist agenda. THere's a movement mobilizing people power to stop Trump MAGA fascism and I beg everyone reading this to seriously look into it and throw in with it while we can. RefuseFascism.org and TrumpMustGo.org Before not only our right to abortion but our right to dissent is crushed.