The effort to remove the federal government from the abortion business failed Thursday (Jan. 17) in the U.S. Senate.
Senators voted, 48-47, to bring the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act to the floor for a vote on final passage. But the roll call fell far short of the 60 votes needed to succeed in the procedural move known as invoking cloture.
The proposal, S. 109, would establish a permanent, government-wide ban on funds for abortions by standardizing the prohibitions that now exist in various federal programs. The bill also would block federal money for abortion coverage under the 2010 health-care law and guarantee full disclosure of abortion funding by health insurance plans that are part of the controversial arrangement....