Last month, in a notable act of political courage, 12 Republicans joined all five Democrats in the New Hampshire Senate to save access to health care for thousands of women and teens. Their action averted financial disaster for the state's health economy.

They may also have saved a few lives.

By a 17 to 6 margin, the Senate rejected House Bill 228, a bill the House adopted in January — without public hearing — that would have banned all state and federal funding to Planned Parenthood in New Hampshire, and lost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in federal health care funding.

The episode is a telling illustration of divisions in the state Republican party and the sharp tactics of a militant House majority that has adopted a national conservative political agenda that's making New Hampshire a laboratory for an imported style of social engineering.

Here's the collateral damage that 207 House members (including one Democrat) and six senators who voted for HB 228 were prepared to accept:

Sixteen thousand mostly lower-income women and teenagers would no longer receive the 6,700 breast and cervical cancer screenings, 20,500 tests for sexually transmitted diseases, and the 4,600 pregnancy tests that six Planned Parenthood clinics provided here last year at little or no cost to patients — along with family planning and contraception services that help reduce the need for abortions.

All this to score ideological points and punish Planned Parenthood for providing abortion care, using strictly private funds, for women in need.

Moreover, the state's Department of Health and Human Services made clear in a “fiscal note” attached to HB 228 that if it became law, $700 million in federal Medicaid funding would likely be terminated, not merely shutting down Planned Parenthood clinics but jeopardizing the finances of 25 hospitals that provide privately paid abortion services and damaging much else in the state's health economy.

The House voted for it anyway.

Back in 2010, when an angry electoral tide swept dozens of conservative new members into the House on promises of fiscal rectitude, there was not much talk about a social to-do list that now includes a Florida-style “stand your ground” gun law, permitting guns on the House floor, encouraging skepticism of evolution and global warming in schools — along with challenges to women's health and reproductive rights.

The past two years have also brought a radical departure from a legislative tradition in which bills were home-grown to meet New Hampshire's specific needs.

Under Speaker William O'Brien, the House is outsourcing the actual writing of its social legislation to special-interest groups like the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a conservative Christian organization based in Arizona and Washington, D.C.

HB 228 originated in 2011 as a bill explicitly banning all public funding for Planned Parenthood. It was modeled on a law the Indiana legislature adopted – but which federal courts quickly quashed as blatantly discriminatory.

The New Hampshire House Committee on Health, Human Services and Elderly Affairs nevertheless devoted hours of work on the bill last year before concluding that it was unwarranted and stamped it “Inexpedient to Legislate,” the official euphemism for ought-to-be-rejected. Traditionally, the House leadership respects committee decisions. Not these days.

Meanwhile, the ADF and its allies regrouped and responded to the Indiana setback with a more intricate attack on Planned Parenthood, with the ironic title of “Whole Woman's Health Funding Priorities Act.”

The new ADF draft law was introduced early this year in as many as a dozen state legislatures including Arizona, Iowa, Oklahoma, Idaho – and New Hampshire.

The new text carefully avoided mentioning Planned Parenthood by name but would have banned all public funding for any health facility that provides abortions, even though those costs are entirely covered by private health insurance or private donations.

When the original, committee-rejected version of HB 228 reached the House floor in Concord in January, Speaker O'Brien and his collaborators abruptly substituted the newest ADF version and demanded an immediate floor vote without benefit of a public hearing.

O'Brien and his party won the vote 207 to 147, but at a cost: Fifty-five House Republicans, including 12 women, joined Democrats to oppose the bill, in prelude to the Senate's bipartisan rejection.

The Senate's latest common-sense action may not matter much unless more voters take notice of candidates' positions on vital issues like women's health.

Robert Gillette is a former science and health writer for the Los Angeles Times. He lives in Ossipee.