Abortion bill will return

The sponsor of an abortion bill that faltered in the last minutes of the legislative session says the failure won't stop him from trying again.

"We'll come back with a bigger version next year," Rep. Paul Ray, R-Clearfield, said Thursday.

The state Senate passed Ray's HB235 with less than two hours left before the Legislature adjourned Wednesday. Because the Senate amended the bill, however, it had to go back to the House, where time ran out before members could vote on the bill.

Ray credited House Democrats, who employed some parliamentary stalling tactics in the waning seconds of the session, for helping kill the bill.

"Obviously, the Democrats were able to filibuster it," he said.

Ray said he was disappointed by the bill's failure, which would have banned abortions in Utah if the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case that recognized a woman's right to have an abortion.

But, he said, it allows him to come back next year with an outright abortion ban, and gives him time to raise enough money to pay for the inevitable legal battle if such a ban passes.

"Next year I can come back with the all-out abortion ban and the private donations to pay for the cost," Ray said.

Early in the legislative session, HB235 was substituted with an outright ban on abortion, with exceptions for rape, incest or extreme medical necessity for the mother. That bill would have set the stage for Utah to lead the way in the challenge against Roe v. Wade, a legal battle estimated to cost upwards of $3 million.

Citing concerns about the cost and timing of the court fight, the House restored the "trigger bill" approach. That's the version the Senate approved late Wednesday, with amendments that stripped the bill of about $1 million in unrelated funding, provided an exception for fatal fetal deformity and made another minor change.

The amendments effectively killed HB235, because they left little time for it to make it back to the House. Still, the Senate would have voted on the bill much earlier in the session, had it been listed as a high-priority item — which it was not.

"It was not one that, as a House leadership team, that we said, 'This is one that we will be pushing,"' said House Majority Leader David Clark, R-Santa Clara.

While he supported the sentiment behind HB235, Clark said he's not sure Utah should take the lead in a challenge to Roe v. Wade.