On the heels of a spate of anti-abortion legislation passed in recent months across the South, Louisiana lawmakers voted on Wednesday to ban the procedure after the pulsing of what becomes the fetus’s heart can be detected. The restriction, backed by the state’s Democratic governor, could prohibit abortions as early as six weeks into a woman’s pregnancy.

Several other states have passed versions of so-called fetal heartbeat bills this year, and Alabama approved a law about two weeks ago that would forbid nearly all abortions in the state.

But the Louisiana measure, coming near the end of a legislative season in which state after state considered bills to either restrict or protect abortion, stood out for the composition of the political coalition that rallied around it. The Republicans who control the Legislature endorsed the measure, but it was written by a Democratic state senator from the Shreveport area, and Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who is running for re-election this year, pledged his support.

“God values human life, and so do the people of Louisiana,” the state senator, John Milkovich, said this month. “We believe this is an important step in dismantling the attack of the abortion cartel on our next generation.”