The push has abortion-rights advocates warning that the effort is part of an orchestrated attack on legalized abortion in statehouses across the country.
"Forget the state budget, forget creating jobs and stimulating the economy - abortion is the priority now," said Andy Hoover, legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. "I can't remember the last time we've seen anything like this."
But then, no one can remember a horror story like the Gosnell clinic.
The news that Kermit Gosnell, who ran a West Philadelphia clinic for 30 years, had been charged in the deaths of seven babies killed with scissors and a woman in a botched abortion stunned the newly elected Gov. Corbett and legislators, who vowed to ensure that such alleged atrocities would never be repeated.
Revelations that no state inspections had been conducted at the clinic in 17 years prompted legislators to begin crafting bills to address what they saw as shortcomings in the regulatory and inspection process.
"This is about women's health," said Sen. Bob Mensch (R., Montgomery), architect of an amendment calling for stricter regulation of clinics. "To say that it's anything but that just isn't true."
The proposals coincide with a wave of restrictive abortion bills moving through statehouses across the country - especially those which, like Pennsylvania's, have new Republican majorities.
Elizabeth Nash, a public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that studies reproductive-health issues, said legislatures were taking aim at abortion in ways unseen since Roe. This year, she said, 70 abortion restrictions have been enacted, far exceeding the 34 approved in 2005, the second-highest number.
