Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times
Representative Joe Pitts, left, who will lead an influential House subcommittee, is a strong opponent of abortion rights.
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON — A leading Congressional opponent of abortion rights, who is in line to take charge of an influential House panel, plans to press for much stricter limits on the procedure.
The selection of the lawmaker, Representative Joe Pitts, Republican of Pennsylvania, as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health presages a major shift on abortion and family planning, according to opponents and supporters of abortion rights.
Opponents of abortion gained about 45 seats in the midterm elections, and they count the next speaker, Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, as a staunch ally, virtually guaranteeing more conflicts with the White House on the issue.
Mr. Pitts was chosen last week as the chairman of the subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over private health insurance, Medicaid and much of Medicare, as well as the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health.
In urging Republican leaders to choose Mr. Pitts, the National Right to Life Committee said he had “made the protection of the sanctity of innocent human life the cornerstone of his service in the House.”
Representative Lois Capps, a California Democrat and an advocate of abortion rights, described Mr. Pitts as “one of the most anti-choice members” of the House. Given the midterm election results, Ms. Capps predicted that the new Congress would be “extremely hostile to a woman’s right to choose.”
Laurie Rubiner, vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said Mr. Pitts was “as anti-choice as a member of Congress can be.”
House Republicans will have difficulty enacting their agenda, since Mr. Obama and a substantial number of senators support abortion rights. But the Republicans may ultimately be able to tighten restrictions in some areas.
Like most Republicans in Congress, Mr. Pitts said he wanted to repeal the health care law, which was passed by Congress on party-line votes without Republican support.
Short of that goal, Mr. Pitts said he was determined to ban federal subsidy payments to any health insurance plans that include coverage of abortion — a benefit now offered by many private health plans.
Under the new law, the federal government is expected to spend more than $450 billion in subsidies to help low- and middle-income people buy insurance from 2014 to 2019.
When Congress was writing the law, Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan, led efforts to restrict the use of federal money for insurance plans covering abortion. Mr. Pitts, though less well known, was the chief Republican co-author of the “Stupak amendment.”
From his powerful new perch, Mr. Pitts said he would try again to impose those restrictions.
“The new health care law is riddled with loopholes that allow taxpayer subsidies for coverage that includes abortion,” Mr. Pitts said.
He has introduced a bill that would, with extremely limited exceptions, ban the use of federal subsidies “to pay for any abortion, or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion.”
Mr. Boehner strongly supports the proposed restrictions. “There is no cause more noble than the defense of human life,” Mr. Boehner said, evoking the memory of Representative Henry J. Hyde, Republican of Illinois, whom he described as “one of my all-time heroes.”
In a speech to the Right to Life Committee in June, Mr. Boehner explained the roots of his beliefs.
“I grew up in a small house in Cincinnati with a big family, 11 brothers and sisters,” Mr. Boehner said. “My parents sent all 12 of us to Catholic schools.” At those schools, he said, “we learned about deeper values, and respect for life was at the top of that list.”
Mr. Pitts, the son of missionaries, is the head of a Congressional group of about 70 social conservatives known as the Values Action Team.
In his new role, Mr. Pitts will work closely with the new chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Representative Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan. In recent years, Mr. Upton, a moderate conservative, supported expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program and voted to allow the use of federal money for some types of embryonic stem cell research.
Mr. Upton opposes abortion but has worked with the Michigan affiliate of Planned Parenthood on some issues. He voted against a Republican proposal to cut off federal money for Planned Parenthood last year, while Mr. Pitts voted for it.
Mr. Boehner and Mr. Pitts have received 100 percent ratings from the National Right to Life Committee, indicating agreement with the group’s positions on major votes. Both received ratings of zero on the Planned Parenthood scorecard. Mr. Upton received scores of 83 percent from the anti-abortion group and 14 percent from Planned Parenthood.
Under the new law, health insurance plans are generally allowed to cover abortion. If they cover the procedure, they cannot use federal money to pay for it. People who enroll in such plans have to write two premium checks, one for abortion coverage and one for everything else, and insurers must keep the money in separate accounts.
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