Pa House Health Committee

The Pennsylvania House Health Committee voted 16-10 to queue up an abortion bill for possible floor consideration this week and next.

The state House's Health Committee voted 16-10 Monday to advance a bill that, all sides agree, if adopted would make some of the biggest changes to abortion policy in Pennsylvania in the last 20 years.

The bill, developed by the General Assembly's Pro-Life Caucus, would lower the gestational age limit for most abortions here from 24 to 20 weeks.

It would also ban, except in cases of medical urgency for the mother, a commonly-used abortion technique known as dilation and evacuation, in which fetuses are physically extracted with tools and often torn apart in the process.

Opponents including Planned Parenthood said the two steps, taken in combination, would mark the biggest attack on abortion rights in Pennsylvania since the current Abortion Control Act took effect in 1994.

The committee vote puts the bill on track for a likely amendment debate later this week on the House floor and a final passage vote next week. Its prospects for final adoption are not considered strong, however, given a promised veto by Gov. Tom Wolf.

Monday's debate was filled with the emotion that regularly attaches to the abortion issue, with members on both sides making poignant arguments about the tough choices parents make for medical and other reasons.

One Republican member, Rep. Jim Cox of Berks County, told about he and his wife's rejections of "options" doctors presented them with after a diagnosis at 20 weeks of severe health problems with one of their five children.

Cox said they did not abort, and his family has been made the richer for it.

"To me, it's as simple as right and wrong," Cox said. "We should be in a position, as a legislature of creating policy that defends life, and if there's any question as to viability that should be left in God's hands."

Opponents, meanwhile, countered with their own stories of constituents who said second-trimester abortions were a humane alternative to painful deaths of their children later in pregnancy or at birth.

Those individual stories, one lawmaker said, is exactly why this debate is premature without more public vetting of a bill that was introduced on Friday and has had no public hearings.

"With either of those decisions, I don't see where I fit in to that conversation as a legislator," said Rep. Jason Dawkins, D-Philadelphia. "That is not a decision that I want to be in charge of telling a family that they do not have options."

Supporters, however, said House Bill 1948 does not take away anyone's right to an abortion.

They argued that it aligns the state's law with medical advances over the last two decades that have effectively lowered the age of viability for fetuses, while limiting reliance on a technique that abortion foes consider particularly repugnant.

"This is violent death for a baby that can most likely feel pain," Rep. Judy Ward, Republican from Blair County, said of the dilation and evacuation technique that is defined as "dismemberment abortion" in the bill.

"Pulling limbs off is a violent death. If this happened to animals, people would be outraged."

In Pennsylvania, there were 1,550 D&E abortions performed in 2014, about 4.8 percent of the total. Many doctors say the procedure is one of the safest techniques for mothers after the first trimester.

Pro-choice advocates also blasted the lowering of the window for all abortions from 24 to 20 weeks.

While 12 states currently ban most abortions after 20 weeks now, Pennsylvania choice supporters say a quirk in the statutory definition here effectively starts the pregnancy clock running two weeks earlier.

That's an especially important distinction, they contend, given that 20 weeks is the point at which ultrasounds often lead to initial findings of major fetal health or developmental issues.

Families need "to have time to think about that," said Rep. Mary Jo Daley, a Democrat from Montgomery County who opposed the bill. "This is a decision that should be made by the people most affected. Not by a Legislature who cannot be there; who doesn't know the facts."

Opponents blasted bill supporters for rushing action on what they considered a major medical issue with no opportunity for the committee to hear from doctors and others who work in the field.

The bill's language was only unveiled Friday, in what some sources have suggested was part of issues horse-trading.

Anti-abortion forces at the Capitol have been itching for a vote on their priorities for several years, with the last major action on abortion here coming in 2011, when new regulations on facilities that perform abortions were adopted.

With legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes hitting the House floor last month over many conservative members' objections, leaders of the GOP majority can balance the ledger by running this bill.

Voting it before the primary, meanwhile, gets it off the agenda before the fall general election campaigns where abortion politics can hurt Republicans in more moderate districts.

One major medical organization did weigh in against the bill.

The Pennsylvania Medical Society urged HB 1948's defeat Monday on grounds that abolition of the dilation and evacuation technique - defined in the bill as "dismemberment abortion" - comes too close to "legislating treatment."

Despite some calls to hear more from medical professionals, a motion to table the bill for hearings failed on a 13-13 tie.

Shortly thereafter, the bill passed its first test, with 14 GOP members joined in support by two Democrats - Reps. Gerald Mullery, D-Luzerne County, and Rob Matzie, D-Beaver County.

One Republican member, Rep. Frank Farry, R-Bucks County, joined nine Democrats in voting no.