The Senate voted today against an amendment to restore the religious liberty protections for employers who don’t want to be forced to pay for birth control or drugs that may cause abortions in their employee health plans.

Leading pro-life organizations called on the Senate to vote for the amendment to the mandate the Obama administration issued, but Democrats banded together against republicans to defeat it on a 51 to 48 margin by adopting a motion to table, or kill, it.

Key pro-abortion senators including Clare McCaskill of Missouri and Jon Tester of Montana voted against the amendment — which will energize pro-life advocates against their re-election campaigns this November.

Washington (AP) - A year in the making, sweeping health care legislation backed by President Barack Obama hung in the balance Thursday as conservative Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson withheld his vote in pursuit of stricter abortion limits and liberals grew restive on the left.

Any lingering hopes the bill's supporters had of a Republican casting a critical 60th vote vanished when Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said after a meeting with Obama that the Democrats' timetable for a pre-Christmas vote was "totally unrealistic."

Nelson, the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, was vague throughout the day about his intentions, eventually telling reporters, "I hope we're getting closer" to agreement...

Senate Democrats took their newfound momentum for health reform into closed-door talks with White House aides Wednesday but still faced a months-old problem: centrist Democrats who aren’t sold on Obama-style reform even now.

If Democratic leadership hoped Republican Olympia Snowe’s decision to cross party lines Tuesday would inspire her fellow middle-of-the-roaders, they were mistaken.

And the moderates’ reluctance to commit showed just how far health reform still has to go, despite getting a boost from Tuesday’s Senate Finance Committee vote...

Washington (CNSNews.com) – Only one Republican -- Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine -- voted in favor of the Senate Finance Committee's Democrat-written version of the health-care reform bill. The measure passed 14-9 on Tuesday afternoon.

“My vote today is my vote today. It doesn’t forecast what my vote will be tomorrow,” Snowe said in her closing statement before voting on the legislation sponsored by the chairman of the Finance Committee, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.)...

Health care reform cleared a major hurdle Tuesday, as the Senate Finance Committee voted to send its version of the legislation to the Senate floor after months of closely watched deliberations.

The committee voted 14-9 in favor of the package. One Republican, Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, broke with her party to support the bill. All 13 Democrats on the panel voted in favor of it, while the rest of the Republicans opposed it.

The panel was the last of five to act on health legislation, and the vote marked the biggest advance so far toward health care reform, as the committee's legislation is considered the best building block for a compromise plan in the full Senate...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The Senate Finance Committee has put off a vote on the fifth pro-abortion health care bill until next Tuesday. News of the decision comes at a time when speculation is rampant that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will use an unrelated bill to get the pro-abortion health care package through the Senate.

The panel had been expected to vote on the Baucus bill this week, but Reid announced today that the vote would not take place until next week.

Republicans, with the exception of pro-abortion Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, will likely vote against the measure while Democrats will support it.

There is a chance pro-abortion Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden and John Rockefeller, of Oregon and West Virginia, will not support the measure because they want the government-run health care option added to it. That would open the Baucus bill up to even more abortion funding...

Senate lawmakers, still hoping to forge an 11th-hour bipartisan agreement on health care reform, are floating the idea of a bill that would create a set of benchmarks that private insurance agencies must meet to avoid triggering a government-run health insurance plan.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, a member of the "Gang of Six" Senate negotiators who met Friday in hopes of brokering a deal to increase access and affordability of health insurance, has proposed creating such a "trigger."

No benchmarks have been offered yet, but they could be drawn from goals stated in the House bill that passed on party lines before the summer recess, as well as objectives outlined by President Obama, the Office of Management and Budget and other principles put forward on both sides of the aisle...