Thread: Senate rejects abortion amendment to healthcare bill

Senate rejects abortion amendment to healthcare bill

The measure would have tightened restrictions on using federal funds for abortion. But critics said it would curb access to the procedure even for women who used their own money to buy insurance.
By Janet Hook

December 8, 2009 | 3:00 p.m.

Reporting from Washington - The Senate on Tuesday rejected an effort to tighten restrictions against using federal funds for abortion under Democrats' landmark healthcare legislation, handing a victory to abortion-rights advocates but setting up a potential conflict with the House.

The Senate voted 54-45 to kill an amendment offered by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) to make sure the bill does not undermine the long-standing ban on federal abortion funding.

But critics defeated the measure, saying it would go too far and curb access to abortion coverage even if women buy insurance with their own money.

That vote put the Senate at odds with the House, which has passed a bill that includes the stricter abortion language backed by a large faction anti-abortion Democrats who otherwise were prepared to defeat the healthcare legislation.

The vote came after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), a lifelong abortion foe, sided with his party's abortion-rights majority in opposition. He gave an impassioned closing speech urging senators to not let the hot-button social issue derail a major expansion of healthcare access that he believed was true to his "pro-life" record on abortion.

The defeat of Nelson's amendment may also jeopardize Nelson's support for the bill, making it harder for Democratic leaders to assemble the votes they need to pass it.

"This debate will continue," said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), who supported the amendment but said its defeat would not turn him against the bill as a whole.

janet.hook@latimes.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and- ... 8557.story

Senate tables Nelson's abortion amendment 54-45

By Michael O'Brien - 12/08/09 05:33 PM ET

Senators voted Tuesday afternoon to set aside a healthcare amendment that would have curbed federal support for abortion coverage.

Senators voted to table a measure from Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Pa.) that would have banned the government from offering insurance plans in a national healthcare exchange that cover abortion.

The amendment, which needed 60 votes to pass and was not expected to be adopted, was tabled in a 54-45 vote.

The provision, which mirrored restrictions in the House's healthcare bill authored by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Neb.), had been offered in part to win over Nelson, who'd previously warned he'd join a filibuster of the healthcare bill if it didn't contain sufficient protections against federal support for abortion.

Democrats lost seven of their own members on the measure -- Sens. Byron Dorgan (N.D.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Evan Bayh (Ind.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Ted Kaufmann (Del.), Robert Casey (Pa.), and Mark Pryor (Ark.) -- while two Maine's two Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, supported the tabling.

The tabling represents a victory for abortion-rights supporters who had worried that the amendment's restrictions on abortion funding would go beyond what had previously been established by the Hyde amendment.


It's not clear, though, whether this afternoon's vote represents the last of the contentious issue's spot in the thick of the Senate's health reform efforts.

Casey, an abortion-rights opponent who co-sponsored the amendment, warned earlier on Tuesday that the de-facto defeat of the Nelson amendment would not mean the end of the Senate's abortion debate.


http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing- ... -amendment

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