The war on Roe is heating up again…

Nashville — After struggling to pass a six-week abortion ban earlier this year, Tennessee lawmakers are now considering one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country: a total ban on the procedure.

On Monday and Tuesday, the state’s judiciary committee will hear testimony from more than 20 witnesses and debate an 11-page amendment to its stalled “fetal heartbeat” bill. If the changes are adopted, the legislation will ban abortion once a woman knows she’s pregnant.

The committee, which has seven Republicans and two Democrats, is expected to accept the changes. The amended bill would be put up for a vote in January 2020, when the legislature reconvenes.

This week’s summer study comes as states have raced to pass legislation restricting abortion, hoping to challenge Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that protects access to the procedure. This year, six states — Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Ohio — passed so-called “heartbeat” bills, legislation that bans abortion after cardiac activity can be detected in a fetus. Missouri passed an eight-week ban in May, and Alabama went a step further passing a near-total abortion ban.

Tennessee nearly joined those conservative states with House Bill 77, a “fetal heartbeat” bill that doesn’t provide exceptions for victims of rape or incest.

It passed the state’s House in March but stalled in the Senate when conservative leaders questioned the efficacy of the bill, said state Senator Kerry Roberts, who serves on the state’s judiciary committee, in a telephone interview with CBS News.

“The pro-life people all agreed that they want to see restrictions on abortion, but they started disagreeing on how to do it,” Roberts said.

Roberts told CBS News the intention of Tennessee’s amended abortion bill isn’t to immediately cut off access to the procedure. The point is to provide a legal challenge to Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey and other Supreme Court precedent.

The original version of House Bill 77 reads similarly to many of the other “fetal heartbeat” bills introduced this year. All face court challenges and nearly all have been blocked from implementation by federal judges. The politicians behind those bills don’t consider that a problem, but rather the first step toward a multi-year journey to the Supreme Court.