The Senate on Thursday voted 52-41 to reject an amendment to the fiscal year 2008 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill (S 1710) that would have cut Title X family planning program funding to clinics using nonfederal funds to provide abortion services, the AP/Chicago Tribune reports.

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who proposed the amendment, said that because many people in the U.S. are opposed to abortion rights, it is a "very reasonable mainstream policy to say" that the government is not going to "support groups that perform abortions." Vitter added that federal funds subsidize abortion by supporting organizations that provide them, even if the groups do not use federal funding to perform abortions. "The way it works now, we send federal dollars to abortion providers ... and it supports their overhead and it supports their organizations," he said.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said federal law prohibits the use of federal funds for abortions, adding that Vitter's amendment would have done "nothing to reduce abortions" and instead would have made "contraceptives harder to get, ... increas[ing] the number of unintended pregnancies" (Taylor, AP/Chicago Tribune, 10/18).