The House Bill would ban all abortions performed directly with public money in the new government-sponsored public plan and it bans abortions in private health insurance plans for women receiving public subsidies. This is where the dispute is. Backers of the amendment say insurance companies could still offer plans that provide abortion as a benefit to people who buy policies with their own money (read middle-class and above). But opponents say there are other provisions in the bill that would make that basically impossible. So, the net result is that there would be no plans in the insurance exchanges that offer abortion coverage at all.

Do women currently have coverage for abortion?

Many women have abortion coverage right now - somewhere between 50 and 80 percent. However, and this is admittedly a disputed statistic, only 13 percent of all abortions are billed to insurance. That's because the vast majority of abortions are done early in pregnancy in the first trimester. They're normally done in abortion clinics and they're cheap - a couple of hundred dollars. Probably, most of the insurance coverage used for abortions are for later abortions that are done for medical reasons, either fetal abnormalities or pregnant women with health problems. Those are abortions that are usually done in hospitals and cost thousands of dollars. Those are the ones that you'd want insurance for. The house bill has no provision for these abortions, no exceptions. They would be banned, too.

What now?

Now the debate switches back to the Senate bill that currently would ban direct federal funding of abortion. There are already some pro-life Democrats who are talking about adding the House language.

However, back in the House there are some 40 pro-choice Democrats who say they won't vote for final bill unless the abortion language is taken out.

They're going to have to find a compromise and it won't be easy.