Pro-Choice Supporters Feeling Left Behind NEW YORK (Associated Press) -

For some abortion-rights activists, the debate over health care reform has been frustrating, even disheartening, as they see their political allies on the defensive and their anti-abortion rivals on the attack.

Many in the abortion-rights movement had hoped that a health care overhaul would include a serious discussion of expanding access to abortion for low-income women. That would have included the possible lifting of a 33-year-old ban on federal funding for abortion except in cases of rape, incest and to save the mother's life.

Instead, under pressure from anti-abortion conservatives, the Obama administration and majority Democrats in Congress have focused their recent public comments about abortion on promises that their reform proposals will conform with that ban, which is known as the Hyde Amendment.

© Copyright 2012, Associated Press