The Idaho Senate is set to debate an informed consent bill that requires women to wait 24 hours before having an abortion and be told by doctors about their fetuses and the procedure’s potential complications.

More via Boise’s KBCI:

The Senate State Affairs Committee voted unanimously Friday to send the amended informed consent bill to the floor for debate.

The changes are meant to allow doctors to skirt the waiting period and information requirements in the case of medical emergencies.

That exception was missing from the original law, which the Idaho Attorney General says is likely unconstitutional.

Deputy Attorney General William von Tagen signed off on the proposed changes, saying they’d likely pass judicial scrutiny.

Anti-abortion advocacy groups praised the measure, sponsored by Sen. Hal Bunderson, (R) Meridian.

Barbara Gough with Generation Life told senate committee members that when she had an abortion at age 17 in 1985, not much information was made available to her.

“They just highlighted the surgery procedure,” Gough told Local 2 News. “There was no information on alternatives to abortion, emotional effects, it was all very superficial. Basically it left me in the dark.”

Meanwhile, abortion rights advocates said the package shores up laws that interfere with access to abortions and encroaches on the doctor-patient relationship.

“This bill forces health care professionals to provide women with information that is intended to discourage them from having abortions,” said Marty Durand with ACLU of Idaho.

In a related development, a proposed new law requiring minor girls to get their parents’ consent before having an abortion has stalled and may not get a hearing this year.

The Idaho attorney general has concerns about its constitutionality.

Idaho has spent $360,000 dollars since 2000 fighting separate abortion-related litigation, including a 2005 parental-consent law that’s on appeal in the U-S 9th Circuit.

That has state lawmakers leery about passing another law that’ll just cost the state more money in legal fees.

According to a March 28 opinion from the state’s top law enforcement agency, provisions of Representative Bill Sali’s bill for a girl to bypass her parents’ permission by going through a judge still face legitimate challenges in court.

The Kuna Republican, who is running for Congress, said he wasn’t certain if he’d be able to resurrect the measure this year.

He says “the bar has been set pretty high.”