750 - Peace & Life: Flexible on Hyde? / 2026 Referendums - January 23, 2026
- Peace & Life Connections
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
“Flexible” on the Hyde Amendment?
We’ve long made the case that politicians not being consistent about opposing all violence comes with a possible lack of sincerity on any one of them. But with many Republicans and abortion, the lack of sincerity on effectively opposing abortion has been clear for a while. It’s becoming more obvious to single-issue pro-lifers, as Kathryn Jean Lopez explains recently in The National Review:
Trump decided this year that he wanted us to be flexible on the Hyde Amendment — a legislative provision that disallows federal funding for abortion . . . By doing so, he made clear that he didn’t have an appreciation for how hard-fought that provision was and that, in the United States at the moment, neither major party is pro-life. We might have known that for a while, but the end of Roe v. Wade, with the Dobbs decision, made things more transparent . . .
Trump just gave us an opening to stop looking at this issue as a partisan one: Pro-life voters do not have to vote for Republicans. We need to fight on both parties — or start a new one (the American Solidarity Party has already done some of the work). If American politics needed to be shaken up for the sake of the voiceless, here we are.
2026 Referendums
Even-numbered years are brimming with referendums. It’s still early, but we’ve identified six already:
Arizona - defining mere criminal activity as “terrorism,” thus turning proper police work into a war mentality.
Massachusetts - we don’t cover firearms policy in general, but do cover red-flag laws and preventing assault-style rifles. Both relate to war-type mass shootings, and also to suicide (impacting euthanasia directly and also all our other issues).
Missouri - “Amendment 3” overturned abortion bans in 2024, so the legislature put this new Amendment 3 on to overturn the old one.
Nevada - They passed a pro-abortion state constitutional amendment in 2024 but they must pass it twice for it to take effect.
Oklahoma - Raising the minimum wage, thus countering poverty. Here we explain why this is pro-life.
Virginia - The legislature voted once to put a pro-abortion amendment on, but has to vote a second time to get it on the ballot. This is likely.
If you know of any more we could cover, please let us know at
Ballotpedia normally covers state-wide initiatives, We need to be alerted to local ones or to ones outside the U.S.
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