President Obama and Senate Democrats sought on Sunday to generate momentum from the House's passage of health-care legislation, even as a new hurdle emerged: profound dismay among abortion-rights supporters over antiabortion provisions inserted into the House bill. 
 
 The House passed its version of health-care legislation Saturday night by a vote of 220 to 215 after the approval of an amendment that would sharply restrict the availability of coverage for abortions, which many insurance plans now offer. The amendment goes beyond long-standing prohibitions against public funding for abortions, limiting abortion coverage even for women paying for it without government subsidies. 
 
 The abortion issue had been rumbling within the House Democratic caucus for weeks, but Saturday's votes revealed the depths of the fault lines. The amendment passed with the support of 64 Democrats, roughly a quarter of the party caucus. 
 
 But abortion-rights supporters are vowing to strip the amendment out, as the focus turns to the Senate and the conference committee that would resolve differences between the two bills. 
 
 Although House liberals voted for the bill with the amendment to keep the process moving forward, Rep. Diana DeGette (Colo.) said she has collected more than 40 signatures from House Democrats vowing to oppose any final bill that includes the amendment -- enough to block passage. 
 
 "There's going to be a firestorm here," DeGette said. "Women are going to realize that a Democratic-controlled House has passed legislation that would prohibit women paying for abortions with their own funds. . . . We're not going to let this into law." 
 
 Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) is waiting for cost estimates of provisions of the bill he is cobbling together, and he hopes to bring it to the Senate floor before Thanksgiving. The battle over abortion has been more muted in the Senate, but Jim Manley, Reid's spokesman, predicted that would change. 
 
 "The debate in the House highlighted some of these issues that we're going to have to face here in the Senate, and on this issue in particular, it's something [Reid] is going to have to talk with his caucus about," Manley said. 
 
 Obama left the abortion issue unmentioned Sunday when he appeared in the White House Rose Garden to give brief remarks congratulating the House on its "courageous" passage of the bill. "Now it falls on the United States Senate to take the baton and bring this effort to the finish line on behalf of the American people," he said. "And I'm absolutely confident that they will." 
 
 Other issues remain unresolved. The House bill's primary new revenue source to pay for the bill is an income tax surcharge on families earning more than $1 million; the Senate bill will probably rely on a proposed new excise tax on costly insurance plans. The House and Senate also differ on a government-run insurance plan to be offered on the new marketplace where small businesses and people without employer-provided coverage -- about 30 million in all -- would buy coverage. 
 
 The Senate version would limit this "public option" by allowing states to opt out of it, but even in that form, the bill's prospects are unclear. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), whose vote Democrats will probably need to break a filibuster, warned again Sunday on Fox News that he will withhold his support if the bill includes a public option. 
 
 The bills also differ in their requirements for employers to provide coverage -- the House's language is tougher -- and in the subsidies for those who cannot afford coverage, which are larger in the House version. Both bills deny subsidies to illegal immigrants, but the Senate version goes further by also barring them from buying coverage on the new marketplace with their own money. ||||| The Democratic-run U.S. Senate defeated measures approved by the Republican-run House to bar spending government funds for the health-care overhaul law and Planned Parenthood. 
 
 The House voted 241-185 to stop federal funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides contraception and abortion services. The legislation was voted down in the Senate, 42-58, with five Republicans joining the 53 members of the chamber’s Democratic caucus to oppose it. 
 
 The House vote to deny funding for the health-care law that President Barack Obama pushed through Congress last year was 240-185. The Senate rejected the measure 53-47 on a straight party-line vote. 
 
 The votes in both chambers were held yesterday as part of the budget agreement reached last week to finance the government operations through the Sept. 30 end of the 2011 fiscal year. The separate budget measure, with spending cuts of $38.5 billion, cleared both chambers and will become law with Obama’s signature. 
 
 House Republicans, who in January passed a measure to repeal the health-care law that is unlikely to come up for a Senate vote, said they were satisfied that senators were required to go on the record on the defunding issue. 
 
 Vote Owed Public 
 
 “This is a vote that the American public has called for, and a vote that we owe the American public,” Representative Rodney Alexander, a Louisiana Republican, said during yesterday’s House debate on the health-care measure. 
 
 Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, said the defunding proposal would “take away the consumer protections” of the health-care law and “put insurance companies back in charge.” 
 
 The defunding provisions for the health-care law and Planned Parenthood were included in a budget bill the House passed in February that called for $61 billion in spending cuts this fiscal year. Republicans sought the Planned Parenthood provision because the organization provides abortion services along with other medical care, such as cancer screenings and tests for sexually transmitted diseases. 
 
 Obama’s Agreement 
 
 Obama insisted that neither provision be included in the compromise budget bill with the $38.5 billion in spending cuts that he negotiated with House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican. The president did agree to the separate votes on the measures, as did Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat. 
 
 In yesterday’s House votes, three Democrats broke with their party to support defunding the health-care law, while seven Republicans split with their caucus to oppose blocking funding for Planned Parenthood. 
 
 Republicans voting against the Planned Parenthood legislation in the Senate were Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Mark Kirk of Illinois, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Maine’s Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. 
 
 Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood’s president, hailed the Senate action. In a statement, she said “this extreme proposal” that “would have denied some family planning” and produced more unplanned pregnancies “was rightly rejected by Democrats and Republicans.” 
 
 Republican Argument 
 
 Federal law bars the expenditure of government money for abortions except under specific circumstances, such as to save a woman’s life. Republicans argued that providing funding to Planned Parenthood frees up other money that the organization can use for its abortion services. 
 
 Planned Parenthood affiliates received $363 million in government grants or contracts in the 2009 fiscal year, according to the organization’s 2008-2009 annual report. 
 
 DeLauro said that 75 percent of Planned Parenthood’s 3 million patients who depend on the group’s clinics for basic health care live at or below the poverty level. 
 
 Planned Parenthood “carries out millions of life- preventing services” each year, DeLauro said. “If this resolution passes all of those services would be lost,” she said. 
 
 Representative Alan Nunnelee, a Mississippi Republican, said “it’s morally wrong to have taxpayer dollars” go to Planned Parenthood, which “has assisted in aborting the lives of over 5 million children” since 1977. 
 
 To contact the reporter on this story: James Rowley in Washington at jarowley@bloomberg.net 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net
– The abortion funding ban included in the health-care bill passed by the House Saturday could doom it down the road, as abortion supporters in the Senate threaten revolt, and those who voted for it in the House vow they won't back the final bill if it's still included, the Washington Post reports. The 11th-hour provision, which was pushed through with the help of the Roman Catholic bishops, "is going to make it that much more challenging on the Senate side," the president of NARAL-Pro Choice America tells the New York Times. And even if the bill somehow manages to squeak by in the Senate, a group of House liberals who voted for the amendment just to keep the bill moving has vowed to block its final passage. "We're not going to let this into law," said Rep. Diana DeGette. For those on both sides of the abortion debate, the stakes are high. "This would be the greatest restriction on a woman's right to get an abortion with her own money in our lifetime," the pro-choice activist said.