AUGUSTA – After the Senate said yes Tuesday, the House said no Thursday to allowing a measure requiring parental consent for birth control prescriptions to be heard.

Without both bodies agreeing, the bill does not go forward.

The House vote was a close 75-67. Those who voted against said the Legislature’s top priority should be the nearly $200 million revenue shortfall looming over the state budget, and that the proposal was too politically charged.

“The real issue behind this measure is an absolute non-issue; it has been amply resolved at the local level,” House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, D-North Haven, said in a prepared statement Thursday. Pingree moved to indefinitely postpone, or kill, the measure. “It is inappropriate and irresponsible to bring such a highly charged, political wedge into the Legislature at a time when actual emergencies demand our complete attention and insist on cooperation,” she said.

The proposal was to order the Health and Human Services Committee to report out a bill dealing with parental consent for minors to get birth control prescriptions. The Senate vote was 29-5 in favor.

The bill submitted after deadline came from Sen. Douglas Smith, R-Dover Foxcroft. Smith said he filed the proposal late because the King Middle School controversy erupted after the deadline.

In October, the Portland middle school found itself the subject of a controversy when it became among the first in the nation to provide birth control to middle school students. Maine laws state that students with parental permission can have confidential treatment at a school health clinic.

Smith said parents should know if their children are getting birth-control prescriptions. Planned Parenthood advocates said mandating parental consent would mean some girls would not have access to birth control prescriptions.

– Bonnie Washuk

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