Fantastic.

(Life News) — A committee in the Minnesota Senate passed a bill Tuesday that would prevent taxpayer funds from paying for abortions, as Minnesota has done for decades. The legislation now heads to the full Senate after the Judiciary and Public Safety Committee voted 8-5 on a party-line vote for the bill.

Forced by a state Supreme Court decision years ago to pay for elective abortions, taxpayers in Minnesota were forced to pay for nearly 4,000 abortions in 2009, or about one-third of all abortions done that year. Stats from the Minnesota Department of Human Services show nearly 32 percent (3,933) of all abortions performed in Minnesota in 2009 were paid for by taxpayers, at a cost of $1.58 million.

Republican Sen. Dave Thompson of Lakeville is one of the lawmakers who voted for the bill yesterday, which also designates original jurisdiction with the state Supreme Court on challenges to the bill. The makeup of the court has changed and pro-life advocates are hopeful they won’t find a nonexistent right to taxpayer-funded abortions in the state constitution in a new case.

“The issue is does the Minnesota state Constitution require taxpayers to fund elective abortions,” Thompson said, according to MPR. “That doesn’t require fact finding. That is a legal question that can be handled by the Supreme Court without taking evidence in a district court setting.”

Minnesota taxpayers have been required to fund elective abortions since the Minnesota Supreme Court’s 1995 Doe v. Gomez ruling. In that decision, the Court created a state “right” to abortion on demand and obligated all taxpayers to fund abortions.