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In the one of the last votes on the last day for a bill to pass from the state Senate to the state House, lawmakers stripped an embryo creation bill of several clauses that could have made it more difficult for gays to create families before it was approved in a party line vote.

The Senate approved S.B. 169 in a 34 to 22 partisan vote on March 12, the 30th legislative day. Known as crossover day, it is the last day a bill can move from the Senate to House and vice versa.

An initial version of the bill, sparked by the controversy over octuplet mom Nadya Suleman, would have limited the number of embryos transferred in an in vitro fertilization cycle. It also would have outlawed payments for sperm and egg donation, potentially gutting a common way that lesbian and gay families conceive children.

Prior to the Senate floor debate, lawmakers stripped the provisions related to the number of embryos and compensation for sperm and egg donors, tailoring the bill to instead limit human stem cell research.

After...