The House on September 19 approved, 250-170, a motion to instruct conferees on the FY2001 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill (H.R. 4577). Offered by Rep. Tom Coburn (R-OK), the motion would instruct House conferees to accede to a Senate-passed provision dealing with the provision of emergency contraception in school-based clinics.
During the Senate’s consideration of the FY2001 Labor-Health and Human Services-Education spending bill in June, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) offered an amendment that would prohibit Title X clinics, community health centers, or Medicaid from “distribution or provision of postcoital emergency contraception, or the provisions of a prescription for postcoital emergency contraception to an unemancipated minor, on the premises or in the facilities of any elementary or secondary school.” Current law allows for the distribution of emergency contraception at school-based clinics through funding provided by federal programs. The amendment was approved by voice vote after a motion to table was defeated, 41-54.
Prior to the August recess, conferees rejected the Senate-passed provision and did not include it in the conference report. Although conferees completed work on the FY2001 Labor-Health and Human Services-Education conference report, they did not file the report. Rather than send the President a bill he would veto, appropriators are attempting to renegotiate a final version that would be amenable to Republicans and the White House.
House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Chair John Porter (R-IL) argued against the motion, saying, “It contravenes instructions given to us by our own leadership, it attempts to circumvent the House rules and procedures, and it makes the completion of our conference more difficult at a time when we are trying to finish our work….The bicameral majority party leadership decided that we should drop all controversial riders….Based on these instructions, the Senate receded from its position.”
Rep. Coburn countered, “What I would ask the gentleman is, does he believe it is right that a 12-year old should get a morning after pill in a school clinic and a parent never know anything about it….Whether or not we are going to give a prescription drug to a young adolescent female without her parents ever knowing in school; that is what the objection is. That is why the rider is there.”
