The House rejected two bills yesterday that would have restricted access to abortions.

One bill would have banned so-called "partial-birth" abortions. The other would have required women to wait 24 hours before having an abortion, until physicians could show them photographs of developing fetuses.

Opponents of the partial-birth ban criticized it from several angles. They said that it did not contain an exception if the mother's life or health were in danger; that it unnecessarily duplicated a federal law passed last year; and that it infringed on women's access to legal abortions.

"What this is about is placing government between a woman and her medical decisions," said Rep. Terie Norelli, a Portsmouth Democrat. "This bill is not about late-term abortions."

Doctors refer to the procedure as "intact dilation and extraction." In such operations, usually performed in the second or third trimester, a fetus's skull is punctured so it can be delivered through the mother's partially dilated birth canal.

But the bill's defenders, some using graphic language, described it as a necessary defense against a dangerous and unethical medical procedure.

"It is simply murder to allow a baby to be killed in that manner; there is no other way to describe it," said Rep. Harriet Cady, one of the bill's sponsors.

A nearly identical bill was rejected four years ago by the House by just a nine-vote margin. The bill up for vote yesterday was defeated 189-129.

President Bush signed into law a federal ban on partial-birth abortions last year. But the law has faced several court challenges over its lack of an exception to allow the procedure if the mother's health is at risk.

The other abortion-related bill considered by the House yesterday would have required women to wait 24 hours while their doctor provided them with written information and photographs about fetal development and alternatives to abortion. Doctors who failed to provide the information would have been charged with a felony.

Without debate, the House also rejected a bill that would have let pregnant women use deadly force to protect a fetus. Opponents said existing laws make it a felony to cause an injury resulting in miscarriage or a stillbirth. The House also voted down another bill that would have made it a homicide to cause the death of a fetus.

The bills considered by the House yesterday were among a handful of reproduction rights-related bills introduced in the current legislative session. After the passage of a law last year that requires underage girls to notify their parents before having an abortion, many anti-abortion activists forecast that this year would usher in more abortion-related laws. But that has not been the case so far; all of this year's bills restricting abortion have been defeated in the State House.

"There seems to be a theory that if you put enough of them up, the House will pass one or two of them,"said Rep. John Pratt, a Walpole Democrat. "But until the Supreme Court decides that abortions are illegal, the rule of the United States, and all 50 states, is the contrary."

(The Associated Press contributed to this report. Daniel Barrick can be reached at 224-5301, ext. 322, or by e-mail at dbarrick@cmonitor.com.)