WASHINGTON (AP) -- The budget President Bush sent to Capitol Hill this week eliminates a Clinton-era program that provided prescription contraceptive coverage to federal employees.
As a result, thousands of female employees may soon lose insurance coverage for birth control.

"I am angered and disappointed by President Bush's decision to eliminate contraceptive coverage for federal employees," said Rep. Nita Lowey, the New York Democrat who sponsored the 1998 provision. "President Bush isn't interested in working together. He only wants to satisfy a small but key group of supporters who oppose all contraception as well as abortion."

Bush administration officials did not immediately react to Lowey's comments.

The provision covers 1.2 million female federal employees who are of reproductive age. The government already refuses to provide insurance coverage for federal employees to obtain abortions. Congress could choose to keep the provision -- despite Bush's stance, although the GOP-led House and Senate have worked hard to keep much of the president's agenda intact. Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said Bush's proposal was "a blatant attempt to deny women equitable treatment."

"It is also the height of hypocracy for a president who opposes a woman's right to choose to also limit women's access to the very thing that prevents unintended pregnancies and makes abortions less necessary," Feldt said.

Bush, an abortion-rights opponent, has been under fire by women's groups since taking office. Just days after being sworn in, Bush barred U.S. aid to international groups that use their own money to support abortion through performing the surgery, counseling about it as a family-planning option or lobbying foreign governments on abortion policy.
He also made John Ashcroft, an outspoken abortion foe, his attorney general.

House Republicans, after years under President Clinton, are also eager to take advantage of an ally in the White House. The week the House returns from its spring recess, GOP leaders have scheduled a vote on a bill that would make it a crime to harm a fetus during a violent criminal act.

Democrats have complained the bill is the GOP's latest attempt to chip away at women's reproductive rights by defining a fetus as a person with rights separate from the mother's. It is the first of several anti-abortion bills Republicans are expected to try to push through Congress. Others would make it a crime to evade parental notification laws by taking a minor across state lines for an abortion and ensure that a breathing fetus, even one taken from its mother's womb during an abortion procedure, would be treated as a person under federal law.
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On the Net:
Planned Parenthood Federation of America:
http://www.plannedparenthood.org
National Right to Life Committee: http://www.nrlc.org
(Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
APTV 04-11-01 1852EDT

R.W. Note: Health plans do, and will continue to, cover "Viagra" for men. What's wrong with this picture? Write or email the President, your Representatives and Senators!