Abortion Coverage

WOMEN'S HEALTH -- Thirty-seven female House members urged President Clinton yesterday to improve the women's health benefits in his health care reform plan.In a letter to the president, the members of the Congressional Caucus on Women's Issues said the plan should be modified to provide more comprehensive coverage for mammograms, pap smears and pelvic examinations. The caucus also reiterated its support for the White House decision to include abortion coverage in the plan's basic benefits package.

WASHINGTON -- Advocates and opponents of abortion rights both threatened yesterday to kill health care reform legislation if they don't get their way on abortion coverage, as congressional leaders began to search for a compromise on the issue.Some leaders were hoping to find a way to postpone a confrontation over the fiercely emotional abortion issue until after the overhaul of the nation's health care system is completed.But it was unclear that either side would agree to such a deal."We believe all Americans, including women, should be treated equally," said Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, who urged her male colleagues at a leadership meeting yesterday not to be so quick to yield to pressure from opponents of abortion.

WASHINGTON -- Over the past few days, Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin has been tutoring his colleagues on why half a loaf of health care reform is probably worse than none.The Baltimore Democrat estimates that he has spent 12 hours meeting with about 35 potential swing votes on President Clinton's health care reform bill in hopes of persuading them to resist modest alternatives that look attractive but that Mr. Cardin says will do more harm than good."Only about three have been unwilling to listen," Mr. Cardin said of his sessions with the Democratic moderates.

This past July, I was happily pregnant and eagerly expecting the arrival of our second child. For nearly eight months, I had been loving my baby in utero and explaining to our 2 1/2 -year old son that he was going to become a big brother. Never in my worst nightmare did I imagine I would need to have an abortion - and certainly not late term. At my 28-week sonogram, the ventricles in our baby's brain measured a little elevated, and I was sent for further testing. Two weeks later, I had an MRI, and my worst nightmare was realized - we learned the baby was missing a main piece of its brain.

Maryland officials are discovering what President Clinton and Congress are about to learn: that it is a tortuous task to develop a comprehensive health care plan that is both affordable and free of political controversy.The state's health care reform effort, though modest in comparison with Mr. Clinton's, became law earlier this year and is nearing completion of its first phase: the development of a minimum package of health benefits that insurers must offer small companies beginning next summer.

Key legislators agreed yesterday to restore $1 million in state funds cut from the budget of AIDS researcher Robert C. Gallo, but insisted that his state-assisted research institute develop a business plan for the future.Finishing work on the state budget for next year, a House-Senate conference committee also agreed not to restrict abortion coverage in a new state health insurance program for children and teen-agers from working families.After a day and a half of negotiating, the six-member committee ended up cutting some $92 million in state funds from the $16.5 billion budget proposed in January by Gov. Parris N. Glendening.

Like Sara N. Love, I'm a longtime supporter of women's legal right to choose to have an abortion -- in fact, I've unwaveringly supported that right for 40 years. Ms. Love claims, in a Friday op-ed in the Sun ("Mr. Hoyer, stand up for reproductive rights," March 12), that I'm now working to undermine that right as part of the House's negotiations over health care reform. She is ill-informed and wrong. Ms. Love writes, "Majority Leader Hoyer has told the press that he is negotiating with Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, who is threatening to derail health care reform unless his dangerous abortion coverage ban is included in the health care reform bill."

WASHINGTON -- The American Medical Association soft-pedaled its unhappiness with parts of President Clinton's health plan in Senate testimony yesterday, saying it could even agree to overall national health care budgets if doctors were involved in setting them.The AMA has called on its members to lobby patients against financial restrictions on health care such as limits on the cost of insurance premiums and cuts in the growth of Medicare and Medicaid.Dr. James S. Todd, the AMA's executive vice president, said, "Absolutely not," when asked if the group was so dissatisfied that it could not work on developing the plan.

WHEN President Clinton was working the Congress, marshaling the votes he needed for NAFTA, some saw him as a smart politician playing the horse-trading game and others as a cynical sharpie who would sell his soul to the Devil if the Devil would deliver an aye.But some abortion rights advocates saw the shape of things to come. Someday soon, they fear, Mr. Clinton, pragmatist par excellence, will wheel and deal on a health-care reform package, and one of the cards he will trade away will be the inclusion of abortion coverage.

WASHINGTON -- Outmaneuvering abortion foes on the Appropriations Committee, Maryland Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski paved the way yesterday for a Senate vote to end a nine-year ban on federal workers receiving health insurance coverage for abortions.While the issue promises to produce a fierce fight on the Senate floor, the 15-14 committee vote was a key victory for Ms. Mikulski and the Senate's other Democratic women, who lobbied hard in recent days -- with help from the White House -- to line up support from their male colleagues.