The One-Vote House: How a Constitutional Amendment Died Without a Vote

In July 2022, the General Assembly gave first passage to SB 106, a constitutional amendment declaring no right to abortion and no funding requirement. Under Pennsylvania's two-session rule for amending the PA Constitution, it needed to pass again in the 2023–24 session to reach the ballot. It never came to a vote, because the PA House had shifted to Democratic control.

The reason was a single seat. The November 2022 election produced a House of 102 Democrats and 101 Republicans. In Pennsylvania, the majority controls the calendar — what reaches the floor is decided by whichever party holds the chamber. A one-seat majority was enough to ensure the amendment was never called up. It expired at the end of the session without a recorded vote in either direction.

The Chronology

• July 8, 2022 — SB 106, an omnibus resolution proposing five constitutional amendments including the no-right/no-funding abortion language, passes the Senate 28–22 and the House 107–92 on the same day. This is first passage. Both chambers are under Republican control.
• November 8, 2022 — Democrats gain 12 seats and win 102 of 203 House seats, their first majority since 2010. Republicans hold 101.
• December 2022 – January 2023 — Three Democratic-held seats fall vacant: HD-32 on the death of Rep. Anthony DeLuca, HD-34 on Summer Lee's resignation for Congress, HD-35 on Austin Davis's resignation as Lieutenant Governor. All three had won re-election. On paper, Republicans briefly hold 101–99.
• February 7, 2023 — Special elections fill all three vacant seats, and Democrats win all three. The 102–101 majority is restored, and Joanna McClinton becomes Speaker.
• 2023–24 session — SB 106 is never brought to a second vote. Under Article XI it must pass both chambers again, in identical form, in the immediately following session. It does not. The proposal dies.
• November 30, 2024 — The two-session window closes. Any future attempt must begin again at first passage.

In a One-Seat Chamber, Every Seat Is Decisive — and No Single Seat Is to Blame

It's tempting to locate the failure in one particular place — say, the three Allegheny County special elections of February 2023. But had any one of Pennsylvania's 203 districts flipped in 2022, it would have changed which party controlled the calendar. A district in Erie, Bucks, Luzerne, or Cambria carried identical weight to those three Allegheny seats.

Cambria County's 72nd District offers the clearest illustration. Rep. Frank Burns, a pro-life Democrat, has represented the district in Johnstown since 2008. He's endorsed by the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation and has voted for abortion restrictions, including a ban on abortions sought after a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis. His district voted for Donald Trump by roughly 40 points in 2024, and many of its voters remain registered Democrats of an older tradition. Burns held the seat by 9 points in 2022 and by under 3 points, a margin of fewer than a thousand votes, in 2024. Had that seat gone the other way, control of the chamber, and of what reached the floor, would have changed.

He isn't the only one conservative democrat elected by a conservative electorate. Rep. Anita Astorino Kulik (D-45th) is the other House Democrat who breaks with her caucus on abortion and ranks among Allegheny County's more conservative Democrats. Her margins were wider — 27 points in 2022, 16 points in 2024 — so her seat was not realistically in play in either year. But the principle holds in both cases: the abortion votes these two members personally cast were never the operative question on whether a constitutional amendment to ban abortion could pass. Their party's control of the chamber was.

The paradox worth teaching: a member's own convictions don't determine what the chamber votes on. Burns and Kulik are both pro-life legislators whose continued presence in the majority caucus helped sustain a majority that would not schedule a pro-life amendment. That isn't hypocrisy, but rather simply how legislative control works. Control of the calendar belongs to a party, not to the individual convictions of its members.

No One Ever Voted the Amendment Down

The amendment in SB 106 was never defeated, it was simply never brought up for a vote. A party holding a majority in either house that doesn't wish to advance an amendment simply doesn't schedule it. There is no discharge mechanism a minority can use to force the question, and no recorded roll call to point to afterward.

The practical lesson: In Pennsylvania, control of the legislative calendar is a big part of control of the outcome. A measure with demonstrated majority support in one session can disappear in the next without a single member ever being asked to vote on it.

This Is the Normal Pattern, Not an Exception

Ballotpedia's review of Pennsylvania constitutional amendments found that between 2010 and 2022, roughly half of all amendments that received first passage failed in the second session. Where party control of a chamber changed between the two sessions, 79% failed — 11 of 14. SB 106 is a textbook instance of the pattern, not a singular event.

The design is deliberate. The two-session requirement exists so a proposed amendment must have enough support to survive a change of electorate. It worked as designed. (See the companion piece, How Pennsylvania Amends Its Constitution, for the general mechanics.)

Where This Leaves the Question

• The clock has fully lapsed. The 2022 first passage is spent. Any future amendment on this subject starts over at first passage. It can't resume where SB 106 stopped.
• The threshold is a simple majority, not two-thirds. Article XI, Section 1 requires a majority of the members elected to each house. The two-thirds figure that circulates in press coverage applies only to emergency amendments. The bar is lower than most people believe.
• The Governor isn't a factor. Constitutional amendments bypass the executive entirely and can't be vetoed.
• The earliest realistic referendum is 2030: first passage in 2027–28, second passage in 2029–30, then advertisement and a statewide vote.
• A loss at the ballot box is expensive. Article XI bars resubmitting the same subject to voters more than once in five years.