Some Democrats to fight abortion amendment in health bill

On CBS's "Face the Nation," Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said the fact that more than 30 conservative House Democrats voted against the bill bodes poorly for it in the Senate, where conservative Democrats have more power. "The House bill is dead on arrival in the Senate," he said. "It was a bill written by liberals for liberals."

The abortion debate in the House has centered on how to put the bill in compliance with the ban on taxpayer funding for abortions. Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) proposed that a government-run plan and private plans offered in the new marketplace for people without employer-based coverage could offer abortion coverage but that payments for abortions would come out of premiums, not the government subsidies for those who need help buying coverage.

Antiabortion groups argued that such a segregation of funds would be a mere accounting gimmick. After a compromise foundered, the amendment by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) emerged as the leading alternative, with the strong backing of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The amendment would prohibit abortion coverage in the government-run plan and any private plan on the new marketplace that accepts people who are using government subsidies to buy coverage.

Under that language, abortion coverage would be unavailable not only to working-class women buying coverage with government subsidies, but probably also to women buying coverage on the new marketplace without federal assistance. The amendment suggests that women could buy separate "riders" covering abortions, but abortion-rights supporters say it is offensive to require a separate purchase for coverage of a medical procedure that for most women is unexpected.

Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life Action, hailed the wide margin for the amendment. "I said all along that the inclusion of abortion as health care was going to be a political conflagration," she said.

It is unclear how broad the impact would be if women were unable to buy plans offering abortion coverage in the new marketplace. A 2003 Kaiser Family Foundation study found that roughly half of people with private health insurance are in plans that cover abortion. That same year, a study by the Guttmacher Institute found that only 13 percent of abortions were directly billed to insurers. Many women pay for the procedure out of pocket or bill their insurer separately, if the abortion provider is outside of the insurer's network.

But Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL-Pro Choice America, said that although the vote was "extremely disappointing and outrageous," the "fight isn't over." DeGette said she remains hopeful that the amendment will be dropped as more Democrats who voted for it -- and their constituents -- realize it goes beyond the status quo of limiting federal funding for abortions. Some of those House Democrats are not against abortion rights, just against federal funding, and she surmised that they may have misunderstood the amendment.

She said her House allies have requested a meeting with Obama, saying they "need him to back us up" after lying low on the issue.

"This would be the greatest restriction on a woman's right to get an abortion with her own money in our lifetime," she said. "The stakes could not be higher."