Washington ? The Senate voted Thursday to lift restrictions on family planning aid to overseas health organizations that perform abortions or promote the procedure as a method of family planning.

The vote came as the Senate passed by an 81-12 vote a $34 billion measure funding foreign aid and U.S. diplomacy.

On the family planning vote, by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., won a 53-41 tally reversing U.S. policy regarding aid to pro-abortion groups. But Boxer’s move has dim prospects of becoming law. President Bush is a passionate advocate of the current policy and has promised to veto any attempt to undermine it.

Such veto threats also apply to the underlying bill covering foreign aid and the State Department budget. It would ease the restrictions to permit family planning groups cut off from U.S. aid to accept U.S.-donated contraceptives.

Boxer and a familiar adversary, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., dominated the brief but emotional abortion debate.

Boxer complained that overseas family planning groups are blocked from counseling women about abortion or from participating in debates about abortion policy in their own countries if they want to hold onto their U.S. aid.

“The policy literally gags foreign organizations that receive (U.S.) family planning funds,” Boxer said.

Brownback said U.S. taxpayers should not be required to subsidize organizations involved in abortions. He is mounting a long-shot bid for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination and is focusing his attention of the party’s base of social conservatives.

“It’s a gut-check issue about where you stand on life … where you stand on whether on not we should be using taxpayer funds for abortion,” Brownback said.

The vote to overturn the so-called Mexico City policy – named after the population conference where President Reagan announced it – was expected. Boxer had prevailed on a 52-46 vote two years ago and her position was strengthened by the results of last fall’s elections that gave Democrats control of the Senate.

But by a 48-45 vote, Brownback narrowly won a bid aimed at continuing Bush administration policy barring U.S. contributions to the U.N. Population Fund because of aid provided to China, whose population-control program relies on coerced abortions. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., had sought to permit U.S. contributions, arguing that the family planning funds could prevent abortions in China.