For every Congressional vote this year on a bill that might become law, there are lots of votes designed solely to make a political point. So it was with yesterday’s U.S. House vote on a bill to ban late-term abortions in Washington, DC.

H.R. 3803, the District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, would prohibit abortions after 20 weeks gestation in the U.S. capital. In recent years, Republican legislators in many states have passed similar laws. A 20-week abortion ban cleared the Iowa House in 2011 but died in the Iowa Senate.

Yesterday’s roll call shows 220 votes for H.R. 3803 and only 154 against it. Pete Kasperowicz explains why this apparent majority wasn’t enough to pass the bill.

Republicans chose to bring up the bill under a suspension of House rules, which required a two-thirds vote for passage.

Predictably, the two-thirds vote requirement doomed the bill from the start. Seventeen Democrats voted with Republicans, but the lack of more substantial support from Democrats meant that the debate and vote were more about letting both parties make political points about abortion that might play in the election, and much less about actually legislating.

I wonder when the anti-choice crowd will get tired of Republican leaders who go through the motions on this issue without making any real effort. On the other hand, a bill like this would be dead on arrival in the U.S. Senate even if it passed the House, so nothing was lost by bringing it up under a suspension of House rules.

Iowa Republicans Tom Latham (IA-04) and Steve King (IA-05) voted for the DC abortion ban, and King delivered a speech on the House floor describing a late-term abortion procedure. Although 17 House Democrats crossed party lines to support this bill, Iowans Bruce Braley (IA-01), Dave Loebsack (IA-02) and Leonard Boswell (IA-03) all voted against it.