Senate rejects abortion amendment to healthcare bill

Posted by Kendall Harmon

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.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Life Ethics • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Senate

2 Comments
Posted December 9, 2009 at 12:00 am [Printer Friendly] [Print w/ comments]



1. Jeremy Bonner wrote:

Democrats breaking step on the Nelson-Hatch Amendment were Pryor (AR), Kaufman (DE), Bayh (IN), Nelson (NE), Conrad (ND), Dorgan (ND), and Casey (D-PA). Byrd of West Virginia did not vote.

Republicans Collins and Snowe of Maine both departed from the otherwise unanimous vote of their party.

Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut voted with his former party on the Nelson-Hatch amendment.

Official Results

December 9, 8:24 am | [comment link]
2. Maguire wrote:

This is a great moment of pro-life, but a major step back for public health care with the rejection of the public option by the Senate. There is a very large demographic of people that are being overlooked right now, and a public option would benefit them.
Eva Mor author of (Making the Golden Years Golden) responded beautifully to a key part of the problem:
“The administration of the existing health delivery system is bloated with waste and unnecessary cost. If information was shared by all providers of health services and all insurers by using computerized systems to store all medical records, it would cut costs and reduce errors that would save and improve lives.” http://www.ourblook.com/component/option,com_sectionex/Itemid,200076/id,8/view,category/#catid107
To regulate costs in the medical industry and update the existing Information and communication technologies would certainly cut a large portion of spending, which has featured as primary complaint in this debate all along.
I hope that when the two bills come together to be voted on the public option may make its way back into the bill.

December 20, 12:14 pm | [comment link]
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