But, the quest to make Utah abortion-free is far from dead, according to State Rep. Paul Ray.

The day after his bill expired in the final seconds of the 2007 Legislature, the Clearfield Republican said abortion foes are energized.

They are already preparing a measure to put Utah at the front of the fight to outlaw abortion and have a $1 million private pledge to help the state with the fight.

“Next year we'll come back with a full-out ban and the money to go to the Supreme Court,” he said Thursday.

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said he would have signed the bill had it passed the Legislature.

Ray's bill, called a “trigger bill,” would have prohibited abortion in Utah once another state had outlawed it and successfully defended it at the U.S. Supreme Court.

It's provisions would be "triggered" - or implemented - only if and when such a court ruling was issued.

But the bill languished for days before senators took up the House-passed measure in the final 90 minutes of the session, and it died in the split second between the time House Speaker Greg Curtis called for a vote to confirm Senate-made changes and the time lawmakers could cast their votes.

Ray blamed Democrats for the delay. But the bill's critics said it is the GOP that controlled the bill's fate, even to its demise.

Sen. Scott McCoy, D-Salt Lake City, noted that he opposed the bill and was happy it failed. Yet he doubts leaders wanted Ray's bill to succeed.

“If they wanted that bill, really wanted that bill, we could have done it literally weeks ago,” he said. “It wasn't prioritized [by Republican leaders]. That's why it got killed by the clock.”

Senate leaders kept the bill bottled up for two weeks before allowing it to come to the Senate floor after dinner on Wednesday, at the height of the end-of-session crush. Then the House let debate on an animal-cruelty drag on, rather than pushing the abortion bill to the top of the agenda.

Missy Larsen, director of the Planned Parenthood Council in Utah, was happy with the outcome.

“The point was the Legislature didn't want to fight this fight,” she said.

“I think what they [anti-abortion advocates] don't realize,” said Larsen, “is that Utahns across the board aren't extremists."

Ray blamed circumstances for finally doing in his bill. It turns out another one of his bills, "Honoring Heroes" in law enforcement, was being voted on in the Senate at exactly the time he was asking House members to support his abortion bill. The clock ran out on the heroes bill, too, and the tally froze, after 12 votes.

"I don't doubt leadership for a minute," he said. "I feel they did everything possible."

fahys@sltrib.com