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Senate Rejects Care for Pregnant Women

Posted on: Wednesday, 12 March 2003, 06:00 CST

Associated Press -- The Senate rejected a proposal to expand government health care for low-income pregnant women and force private health insurance companies to make contraceptives more widely available.

The 49-47 vote Tuesday - 11 short of the 60 needed - came during debate on legislation to ban a procedure that critics call partial birth abortion.

The same vote also turned back a proposal to make emergency contraceptives - known as the morning-after pill - available in hospital emergency rooms for victims of sexual assault.

The underlying abortion measure is expected to clear the Senate later this week, and House passage is assured.

President Bush has said he would sign the legislation, and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., an opponent, acknowledged the measure will become law - at least for awhile.

"This will end up in court," she said. "That's absolutely true."

Murray and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., offered the proposals to provide greater access to contraceptives and pregnancy-related services, including a requirement for health plans to provide contraceptive coverage if they offered a prescription drug benefit.

Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., put the cost of expanded health insurance for low-income pregnant women at $1 billion, and said Republicans would address the issue later this spring when they write a budget.

But he said he opposed wider distribution of emergency contraception, saying, "I believe that life begins at conception and drugs that would prevent a conceived embryo from being implanted, I would not support that."

The proposal drew the support of 42 Democrats, six Republicans and one independent. Opposed were 44 Republicans and three Democrats.

Supporters of the so-called partial birth abortion bill argue that the procedure to be banned is barbaric, carried out on a fetus within inches of being born alive, and never medically necessary.

Opponents counter that the legislation is unconstitutional because it could ban more than one procedure, and that while it contains an exception to preserve the mother's life, there is no similar provision to protect a woman's health.

The measure that Republicans brought to the floor bans a procedure in which a doctor commits an "overt act" designed to kill a partially delivered fetus.

The legislation includes an exemption in cases in which the procedure is necessary to save the life of the mother.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a surgeon, joined the roster of lawmakers expressing support for the measure during the day, describing the type of abortion in dispute as "a fringe medical procedure."

He said the procedure is not usually performed until a woman has reached a 20th week of pregnancy, and that many of the fetuses involved would have a "fighting chance of being a healthy human being" if the abortion were not performed.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., countered by reading from a statement by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which opposes the bill. "There may be circumstances where the physician and the patient would reach the conclusion that this procedure is most appropriate," the group said in a 1997 fact sheet that a spokesman said still represents the organization's views.

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