WASHINGTON -- Flanked by a panoply of health reform advocates in a packed Capitol meeting room i Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid showcased the sweeping plan he had unveiled the day before to overhaul the nation's health insurance system and expand coverage to millions.

But the second question he took from reporters yesterday focused not on cost controls or insurance practices. Rather, it addressed a divisive social issue that has nosed its way into the debate in recent weeks. "First of all, this is a health care bill; it's not an abortion bill," said Mr. Reid, clearly a bit irked.

Still, whether the bill funds abortions has become a central part of the controversy. In the House, a last-minute intervention by the Catholic Church and a bloc of anti-abortion members secured strong anti-abortion language that was vital to securing enough votes for the bill's Nov. 7 passage.

Mr. Reid's Senate bill contains a mandate that public money not fund abortions, but does not go so far as the House version, which bars anyone who receives a federal subsidy for health insurance from buying a policy that covers abortions from the newly created health insurance exchange.

The Senate legislation mandates that health insurers who accept customers from the exchange segregate any public funding from resources used to fund abortions -- as is required by current federal law. The government-run "public option" will not fund abortions; the so-called conscience clause, which lets anti-abortion health workers decline to perform the procedure, will remain intact.

"There's an uneasy truce between the pro-life and pro-choice camps on this," said Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark. "It's been going on for decades, and my sense is we ought to just keep the status quo."

The National Right to Life Committee disagreed with that assessment, and was swift in its dismissal of the Senate bill. "Reid seeks to cover elective abortions in two big new federal health programs, but tries to conceal that unpopular reality with layers of contrived definitions and hollow bookkeeping requirements," Douglas Johnson, NRLC legislative director, said in a statement.

Pennsylvania's Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, an anti-abortion Catholic, yesterday said he hasn't yet had time to digest the abortion language and its implications in Mr. Reid's 2,074-page bill. "The most important thing right now is getting the bill to the floor," he said. "I'm going to have lots to say. I have provisions I've been working on that are not in the bill yet; I've got a long list."

The first procedural vote on the bill is planned for tomorrow night. In the face of likely universal Republican opposition, Democratic leaders will need all 60 votes from their caucus for that critical tally to kick off debate.

Leaders were targeting three moderate Senate Democrats who have not yet committed to moving the bill: Arkansas' Blanche Lincoln, Nebraska's Ben Nelson and Louisiana's Mary Landrieu.

If the bill does reach the floor, it will be subject to amendments. Mr. Casey and other anti-abortion senators then could offer changes to alter the abortion section.

Mr. Casey serves on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which weighed in on the reform package over the summer. He broke with fellow panel Democrats to support a handful of failed amendments to strengthen abortion provisions, including one proposed by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, similar to the amendment sponsored in the House by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., that ended up in that chamber's version.

But ultimately, abortion concerns did not stop Mr. Casey from voting to move along his committee's bill. So does that mean similar reservations won't prevent him from voting for the final bill? "You're free to make any assessment you want, but we're going to wait 'til we get there," he said.

It will be a long road, with several weeks of spirited debate likely in the freewheeling Senate -- as opposed to the House, where, because of different procedural rules, the bill passed after only a day of tightly controlled debate.

Interest groups are gearing up accordingly. NARAL Pro-Choice America delivered a petition Monday to Mr. Reid's office in oppostion to the Stupak amendment's wording, and it has organized phone banks to support abortion rights.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops plans to send a letter to Senate leaders addressing the bill and abortion issues. The organization wielded considerable political clout during the final frenzied days before the House vote, before winning a big victory with the Stupak amendment co-sponsored by Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper, D-Erie.

Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, tried to negotiate compromise abortion language in the House health care bill that would have allowed women to purchase abortion coverage from a newly created health insurance exchange without using federal money to fund the procedure.

That effort failed, and the House voted to bar women who receive federal subsidies for health insurance from purchasing a plan covering abortions. Mr. Doyle voted for that amendment, he said, because it was his only opportunity to show his opposition to federal funding for abortions.

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