Abortion is defined as the termination of an unwanted pregnancy. Thought by many that women’s reproductive rights should include the right to abortion, funding for abortion has been disputed for decades. Currently, reproductive rights held by women include access to birth control and contraceptives to prevent pregnancies. Organizations such as Planned Parenthood, where services such as sex education and said health care for women is provided, as well as abortions, are currently run with funds from the government. The topic over public funding for abortions using taxpayer and or government money has been an ongoing debate between “pro-choice” and “pro-life” individuals for years. To be pro-choice is to believe that it is the woman’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. Opposite of that, pro-life individuals carry the belief that abortion is murder. This being said, pro-lifers argue that organizations that provide abortion services deserve neither taxpayer nor federal funding due to the belief of protecting the rights of the unborn.Government law has banned the use of federal money to fund abortions except in the case of emergency situations. In 1997, The Hyde Amendment, a ban on federal funding for abortion, was enacted. This amendment is the cause of the ban and establishes that federal funding for abortions is only allowed in the case of incest and rape. Prior to 1997, emergency situations qualified as incest, rape, and conditions caused by the pregnancy that would endanger the unborn child or the mother. The Hyde Amendment has also affected those in the Medicaid program, at an estimated seven million women in need of necessary health care coverage, making it especially harder to cover the costs to be treated. Medicaid is a joint federal and state program which finances necessary health services to the eligible Americans who cannot afford to cover the costs for health care by themselves. As stated before, the Hyde Amendment cut funds for abortions for women insured under Medicaid. However, sixteen states across the country have in place a policy to use own funds to cover the cost of abortions for Medicaid recipients as long as they are medically necessary, as in life threatening to either the woman or the developing fetus. Defunding organizations such as Planned Parenthood due to the fact that they offer abortion services would leave women with low incomes without easy access to reproductive health care. It was stated that ninety percent of Planned Parenthood’s services were for preventive care and that just three percent was reported for legal abortions. With the funding of essential planning services, it was reported that the number of abortions performed within the organizations was actually at a reduced rate. Since all federal funds are supposedly collected for services other than abortions, cutting federal funds would leave millions of women without these services, whether it be abortion or preventive medicine such as contraceptives or birth control. Easy access to abortion and reproductive health care is essential in order to safeguard the health of women and in order to give them control over their body and life choices.