Washington » Abortion rights groups, outflanked and outnumbered in the health debate, are scrambling to regain lost ground after the House passed a health bill with strict abortion limits.

They're blanketing Capitol Hill with lobbyists, petitions, letters and phone calls in efforts to defeat the restrictions in the Senate, where debate could begin in a few days. They also have a larger goal: to prove that with their Democratic allies in control of the White House and both congressional chambers -- but increasingly appealing to conservative voters who back abortion limits -- they still have clout.

It's an uphill battle after the House approved health legislation that bars a new government-run insurance plan from covering abortions, except in cases of rape, incest or peril to the life of the mother, and prohibits any health plan that receives federal subsidies in a new insurance marketplace from offering abortion coverage.

Lawmakers who back abortion rights watched helplessly, lacking the votes to prevail, as fellow Democrats who oppose abortion joined with Republicans to put the curbs in place, prodded to action by Catholic bishops and anti-abortion groups. Then they voted en masse for the final health bill, in a move quickly hailed by President Barack Obama as "historic."

"Our phones were ringing off the hook," said Cecile Richards, of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, who hosted a hastily called strategy meeting last week in which abortion rights and women's groups scrambled to regroup. "We're not going to have health care reform off the backs of women -- this isn't what we've all spent our lives for."

Abortion rights supporters, summoned to the White House's West Wing on Wednesday to meet with top aides, were offered reassurances.

We're your friends and the president is pro-choice, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel reminded the group of 15 or so women.

Still, the key interest group is struggling to maintain its influence.

Early on, the organizations had opted to stay quiet on the abortion-funding issue for fear of making a politically tricky negotiation over a health care overhaul even harder.

"We were trying to diffuse the situation, knowing that the time to fight on the notion of federal funding for abortion was not this political moment -- the health care reform bill is hard enough. Now I'm thinking we might have recognized that we were going to have this fight, and we should have stood firm a year ago and we might not have found ourselves here," said Laura MacCleery, director of government affairs at the Center for Reproductive Rights.