Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

14. Department of Health and Human Services · Notable

Withdraw the Medicaid abortion travel guidance and Section 1115 waivers

Partially done

471 14. Department of Health and Human Services

“Two of the first actions of a pro-life Administration should be for HHS to withdraw the Medicaid guidance (and any Section 1115 waivers issued thereunder) and for DOJ OLC to withdraw and disavow its interpretation of the Hyde Amendment.”

What has happened

  1. Partially done

    **Limb (b) is delivered, in terms.** The Office of Legal Counsel issued *Reconsidering the Application of the Hyde Amendment to the Provision of Transportation for Women Seeking Abortions*, 49 Op. O.L.C. __, signed by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Lanora C. Pettit, read in full on 2026-09-03. Its headnote: "This Office concluded in 2022 that the Hyde Amendment does not bar the Department of Health and Human Services from expending covered funds to provide transportation for women seeking abortions. Having been asked to reconsider, we now conclude that the Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of federal funds to provide ancillary services necessary to receive an abortion." The word the Quote uses is the word the opinion uses, three times: "we now think it appropriate to withdraw that opinion"; "The 2022 Opinion's contrary conclusion is withdrawn"; and, closing, "the appropriate response is to withdraw our prior contrary opinion." The request came from HHS itself — the opinion cites a memorandum of 2025-02-17 from Sean R. Keveney, Acting General Counsel, HHS — and was made "consistent with" Executive Order 14182. **Limb (a) is not delivered.** No CMS withdrawal of the Medicaid abortion-travel guidance was found; a control-verified search of medicaid.gov for `abortion` returns four pre-window documents and nothing in the window, and CMS has resolved no Section 1115 application on this subject (see #1301, read the same day). Under the two-object rule one object delivered and one not is `partial`, which is where the item already sat — so this is a note-and-Evidence correction rather than a rung change, and it replaces a sentence in the earlier note that was false. **Shared citation:** this opinion is also the moving citation for **#1380** (repeal DOJ OLC memos allowing abortion funding despite Hyde). What it does to *this* Quote is complete the second of the two named acts.

  2. Partially done

    Executive Order 14182 revoked Executive Order 14079 of 2022-08-03 - the order that had pressed the HHS Secretary to consider Section 1115 demonstrations supporting out-of-state abortion travel - together with Executive Order 14076, and directed OMB to issue implementing guidance. The instruction the guidance rested on is gone. The two acts the Quote actually names have not been evidenced: no allowlisted, readable record shows HHS withdrawing the Medicaid guidance itself or any waiver issued under it.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • EO 14182 read in full at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-01-31/html/2025-02175.htm; section 2 revokes EO 14076 and EO 14079, section 3 assigns implementation to OMB.
  • HHS OCR’s rescission of the 2021 Church Amendments guidance (FR 2026-01435, 2026-01-26) is expressly issued “Pursuant to Section 1 of Executive Order 14182” and records that the 2022 CMS EMTALA abortion guidance was rescinded on 2025-05-29 - useful context, and the EMTALA limb belongs to #1305, not here.
  • The OLC index can be searched, and the earlier note’s negative was false. Its paging and its full-text search both work when requested as a browser does; a search for “Hyde” returns 3 results, “abortion” 9, “enclave” 1, “Assimilative” 1, and a nonsense control term returns “Your search conditions returned no results” — so the filter is real and the counts are not an artifact of a dropped query (measured 2026-09-03).
  • Address note: justice.gov/olc/media/1408241/dl is the download link OLC’s own index serves for the July 2025 opinion and it returns the PDF; it is an opaque id, so it may not stay stable. The stable alternative, justice.gov/olc/opinions?search_api_fulltext=Hyde, is a listing rather than the document.
  • Leveling: partial because revoking the underlying executive order is a completed action that removes part of the named apparatus. A reviewer who counts only the two acts the Quote names would hold this at not started; we note it as a close call.
Action
withdraw
Object
Medicaid abortion travel guidance and DOJ OLC Hyde Amendment opinion
ID
1297