ANNAPOLIS (LifeSiteNews) — The Maryland Senate voted 29-15 on Monday to create an abortion fund using money collected through the federal Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), opening up $25 million to perpetuate abortions in the first program of its kind nationwide.

SB 848 would create a “Public Health Abortion Grant Program,” which would use money collected from ACA health insurance surcharges to guarantee so-called “equitable access to abortion care [sic] clinical services for individuals without sufficient resources.” Those funds would then be administered to abortion facilities as grants.

A companion version of the bill was approved last week in the House of Delegates, but differences in the details between the two versions must be resolved before it can be signed into law by Democratic Gov. Wes Moore. If successful, it would go into effect July 1.

“Poor women do not need free abortions,” Maryland Right to Life executive director Laura Bogley responded. “They need public support programs that will empower them to choose life for their children.”

“Instead of allocating public funds to expand abortion access, our state should prioritize policies that support mothers in need, provide real health care solutions, and affirm the dignity of both mother and child,” agreed Maryland Catholic Conference executive director Jenny Kraska. “We also hope that the federal government will act to ensure that taxpayer dollars cannot be used in this manner to fund or subsidize abortion at the state level.”

Thirteen states currently ban all or most abortions. But the abortion lobby is working feverishly to cancel out those deterrents via deregulated interstate distribution of abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, constructing new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors, and embedding abortion “rights” in state constitutions.

Maryland is particularly aggressive with such efforts, with the state House of Delegates having recently voted to allow contraceptives to be sold in vending machines on public school grounds.

Last fall, Maryland residents voted 74.11% in favor of their so-called “Right to Reproductive Freedom” Amendment, which writes into the state constitution that “every person, as a central component of an individual’s rights to liberty and equality, has the [so-called] fundamental right to reproductive freedom, including but not limited to the ability to make and effectuate decisions to prevent, continue, or end one’s own pregnancy. The state may not, directly or indirectly, deny, burden, or abridge the [so-called] right unless justified by a compelling state interest achieved by the least restrictive means.”