Barbara Boxer sounds confident that the Senate will not be able to join the House in passing restrictive anti-choice language in the health care bill.

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said that 60 votes would be needed to strip the current health care bill of its abortion-related language and replace it with a version resembling that passed by the House of Representatives on Saturday. And, in an interview with the Huffington Post, the California Democrat predicted that pro-choice forces in the Senate would keep that from happening.

“If someone wants to offer this very radical amendment, which would really tear apart [a decades-long] compromise, then I think at that point they would need to have 60 votes to do it,” Boxer said. “And I believe in our Senate we can hold it.”

“It is a much more pro-choice Senate than it has been in a long time,” she added. “And it is much more pro-choice than the House.”

As I noted yesterday, it is very likely that the Senate would need 60 votes to pass the restrictive provision as an amendment, because it was not included in either committee bill. And I did a preliminary vote count showing how unlikely it is that 60 votes could be found. Boxer has run the numbers as well.

The only caveat here is that Ben Nelson could become the Senate’s Bart Stupak and threaten to filibuster the underlying bill if the Stupak language wasn’t inserted. But he has not fully announced that yet, and could be satisfied with something less restrictive.

Jon Walker noted today that the language of the Stupak amendment, that no funds under “this Act” could be used “to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion,” could easily be extended to impact wellness subsidies given to large employers, small business tax credits for purchasing insurance, or reinsurance plans for employers that cover early retirees. In other words, the amendment wouldn’t only affect plans on the exchange, but basically all employer-based plans which take advantage of any funding under this bill as well.

UPDATE: Chris Bowers concurs.