RALEIGH - After a pointed legal and moral debate, the Wake County Board of Commissioners agreed Monday to restore insurance coverage for elective abortions for county employees.

"I don't think that government should be telling women what to do with their bodies," board member Stan Norwalk said.

With Democrats outvoting Republicans 4-3, members overruled county manager David Cooke. Cooke removed the coverage from the county's self-insured plan when he learned of language in a 1981 state Supreme Court decision that could be read to forbid counties from paying for elective abortions. Rep. Paul Stam, who was the plaintiff in the case, brought it to board chairman Tony Gurley's attention this year.

Before voting, board members heard arguments for reinstating the coverage from Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union, who said the Supreme Court case didn't override a county's power to decide employee benefits. On the other hand, Raleigh resident Diana Starling was one of several people who made impassioned pleas against the county funding.

"Please do not use my family's money to destroy what God created," Starling said.

Sarah Preston, legislative director of the state ACLU office, called the choice to have an abortion "a very difficult decision." Said Preston: "Placing additional burdens on a woman already in a difficult situation will not help anyone."

Cooke's decision would have prevented a woman with medical conditions such as cancer or pre-eclampsia from having the option of an abortion, said Melissa Reed, vice president of public policy for Planned Parenthood.

Despite its symbolic importance for people on both sides of the issue, abortion coverage for county employees costs taxpayers little. Only one or two women a year use the coverage, according to county officials. But the abortion-insurance issue has become a battleground in local government.

Stam's legislative assistant Keith Weatherly, who is also mayor of Apex, began pushing the issue late last year. Weatherly put the issue before the town council on Jan. 19, and the town body voted to end abortion coverage.

At Monday's meeting, Republican board members argued that the panel should not ignore the advice of county manager Cooke and county attorney Scott Warren. They had told the board that it should follow the 1981 precedent, in which Stam successfully sued to stop Wake County from funding elective abortions for indigent women. Democrats cited supportive opinions from the UNC School of Government and the ACLU before their votes.

Members first defeated a motion from Commissioner Joe Bryan, a Republican, that would have brought county coverage in line with federal employees' health insurance, which pays for abortions only in the cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother would be endangered.

"It seems like we are being swallowed up in a national tide," said board chair Gurley, a Republican, referring to the Congressional debate over whether national health care reform should include coverage of elective abortions.

Board member Harold Webb, sidelined since last year by a stroke, voted with his Democratic colleagues via telephone in reinstating employees' coverage.