pennsylvania capitol building

A bill carrying the most far-reaching restrictions on legal abortions in Pennsylvania in a generation passed the state Senate Judiciary Committee Monday on a 9-5 vote.

The party-line vote - with all Republicans voting yes and all Democrats no - sets the bill on a course for possible consideration by the full Senate later this year.

The main drama there would be whether its supporters would be able to muster a veto-proof majority - Gov. Tom Wolf has made plain that he would veto the measure if it hits his desk.

House Bill 1948, which passed the House on a 132-65 margin last month, puts Pennsylvania's squarely among a wave of conservative state legislatures trying to rewrite American abortion law. Its two major provisions would:

* Limit abortions to cases of medical necessity after 20 weeks of pregnancy rather than the current 24-week ceiling.

* Sharply curtail the use of a common second-trimester abortion technique known as dilation and evacuation, in which the fetus is extracted with tools, their bodies often torn apart in the process.

Rep. Kathy Rapp's bill defines that technique as "dismemberment abortion." It, too, would only be permitted in cases where the mother is otherwise at risk of death or "substantial and irreversible" loss of major bodily functions.

The bill's supporters have characterized it as a modest update designed to adapt Pennsylvania's generation-old Abortion Control Act to a changed health care environment marked by great advances in neo-natal care.

Citing U.S. Supreme Court decisions that effectively guarantee a right to abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb, abortion opponents said new science has pushed that date well before 24 weeks.

But the bill's opponents have said the two steps, taken in combination, mark the biggest attack on abortion rights in Pennsylvania since the current abortion law was adopted in 1989.

Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Montgomery County and a strong gun control advocate, criticized senators for picking and choosing which legal rights they'll protect at all costs, and which they habitually tinker with.

Leach noted the most modest gun control measures instantly bring outcries of protect from advocates for gun owners' rights.

"Yet we can pass laws about this womens' Constitutional right - equal, totally equal to the 2nd Amendment - we can pass these laws over and over again in the most intrusive way and that's no problem. No problem at all."

In May, South Carolina became the 17th state to place a 20-week threshold in place.

The 20-week abortion bans are being blocked by federal or state courts in three of those states according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health rights organization.

Twenty weeks has become such a battlefront because it is the precise point when many fetal deformities first present themselves through ultrasounds and other pre-natal examinations.

HB 1948's opponents, repeatedly citing tales of friends, constituents and family members who chose sixth-month abortions after 20-week ultrasounds picked up fatal deformities in their unborn children, have said Rapp's bill seeks to wedge government into the most personal of decisions.

"Who is anybody in this room to tell a woman what to do in that critical time? And a family. Their doctor and them get to make that decision," asked Sen. Lisa Boscola, D-Northampton County.

"It really irks me because everyone thinks: 'Oh these women and men, they just choose to have abortions willy-nilly.' They do not. It's hurtful. They cry. There's pain. And now you're going to add to it.

I'm offended," Boscola, the lone woman on the committee, continued, "and I can tell that this is an election-year political gimmick because you know that the governor is going to veto it."

Sen. John Eichelberger, R-Blair, said there is another consideration.

"We can clearly see now that babies can survive after 20 weeks, not 24 weeks... We're moving that up to protect the lives of the baby. You know, they're a part of this equation as well," Eichelberger said.

Only six other states have passed laws banning the dilation and evacuation procedure, which doctors say in many cases is the safest abortion technique for a mother after the first trimester.

In most of those states, the D&E bans are either still facing court challenges or haven't taken effect yet.

HB 1948's supporters, however, have said they are trying to stop a barbaric practice.

For all the emotion it has generated, the bill would not affect the vast majority of cases as abortion is practiced in Pennsylvania today.

According to the state Health Department, there were 1,550 dilation and evacuation abortions performed in 2014, the last year for which data is available. That represented about 4.8 percent of all abortions in Pennsylvania.

But those procedures do represent more than 40 percent of all abortions completed after the fourth month of a pregnancy.

Those same Health Department records show only 328 abortions occurred after the 20th week of gestation last year, or about 1 percent of the total.

Jennifer Kocher, press secretary to Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre County, said Monday the leader has no timeline for running the abortion bill on Senate floor at this point.