Why would Republicans try to sneak in this language? A look at the history of H.R. 3 provides some potential answers. Both Richard Doerflinger of the US Council of Catholic Bishops and the NRLC's Johnson, arguably the two most influential anti-abortion lobbyists on Capitol Hill, have offered the same explanation for why the "forcible rape" language was originally introduced: Johnson said it was intended to fend off a "brazen effort," by abortion rights groups to exploit the rape exception in Hyde. Abortion rights groups were, in Johnson's words, planning to "federally fund the abortion of tens of thousands of healthy babies of healthy moms, based solely on the age of their mothers." Doerflinger argued in congressional testimony that the language was "an effort on the part of the sponsors to prevent the opening of a very broad loophole for federally funded abortions for any teenager."
Doerflinger and Johnson's words are echoed in the Republicans' committee report. Immediately after arguing that Hyde and H.R. 3 prohibit federal funding of abortions in cases of statutory rape, the Republicans write:
The Hyde Amendment has not been construed to permit Federal funding of abortion based solely on the youth of the mother, nor has the Federal funding of abortions in such cases ever been the practice.
This is some tricky language. It's true, but it's meaningless, and it has nothing to do with statutory rape. There's an obvious difference between "federal funding of abortion based solely on the youth of the mother" and federal funding of abortion based on a reported, prosecuted, or otherwise documented case of statutory rape. Doerflinger and Johnson's comments seem to elide that difference, and so does the committee report.
In any case, it seems hard to fathom that Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers could get away with charging the government for abortions performed on "tens of thousands" of teenagers. Currently, the Hyde Amendment exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother lead to Medicaid covering just a few hundred abortions a year. Such a vast expansion of the scope of the rape exception would almost certainly launch a major political controversy. But just to be sure, Mother Jones asked Planned Parenthood whether it had ever considered trying to use the rape exception to convince the government to pay for abortions for teenagers "based solely" on their age. The group said no.
Here's the bottom line: all of the most important anti-abortion groups and lawmakers oppose the exceptions that allow for federal funding of abortions in cases of rape and incest. They believe that abortion is an absolute moral wrong. Supporters of H.R. 3 argue that the "forcible rape" language made no practical difference at all, and was just meant as a clarification to fend off a secret effort by Planned Parenthood and others to get the government to pay for tens of thousands of abortions for teenagers. But there's another possibility: abortion foes have been fighting the rape and incest exceptions for years, and this was just another attempt to narrow them. In the case of H.R. 3, they first tried a frontal assault. That failed. This is their sneak attack.