MADISON, Wis. — Hospitals wouldn’t have to give rape victims the morning-after pill under changes a Republican-led legislative committee made Tuesday to a bill requiring the medicine be dispensed on request following sexual assaults.

The original measure passed the Demcoratic-controlled Senate in May on a 26-7 vote. It would require a hospital to give rape victims information about emergency contraception, tell them they have the option of using it and give it to them upon request.

The Assembly Judiciary and Ethics Committee amended the measure to allow hospitals to opt out of dispensing the pill on moral or religious grounds.

The panel also changed the bill to allow individual doctors to refuse to hand out the pill on similar grounds and prevent hospitals from discriminating against them. Hospitals and individual doctors who refuse to dispense the pill also would be exempt from civil damages.

The committee passed the bill 6-4.

NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin, which advocates for abortion rights, blasted the changes, saying the committee gutted the measure.

“The bill’s only opponents are extreme groups who seek to outlaw all forms of birth control,” the group said in a statement.

The committee’s chairman, Rep. Mark Gundrum, R-New Berlin, said the changes remove legal challenges revolving around rights of conscience.

The revisions also are an extension of existing state law, which protects hospitals and their employees from liability if they refuse to provide abortions on moral or religious grounds, he said.

“What we did was address the very legitimate and real constitutional concerns,” Gundrum said.

Also Tuesday, the judiciary committee passed a GOP-authored bill that would require doctors to determine if a woman is being forced into an abortion.

If a doctor feels she is being coerced, he or she would have to tell the woman about domestic abuse services, give her written materials about services and give her private access to a telephone.

Seven other states — Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Utah and West Virginia — require doctors to discuss coercion in verbal counseling or give a woman written materials stating coercion is illegal, according to the Gutmacher Institute, which studies sexual and reproductive health.

Current Wisconsin law requires a woman seeking an abortion to give her free and informed written consent.

Wisconsin Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, praised the committee. Women often are intimidated into abortions, the group said.

“This legislation will reinforce the fact that it is against Wisconsin law to perform an abortion on a woman against her will,” said Susan Armacost, the group’s legislative director.

The committee passed the bill 8-2.

Rep. Fred Kessler, D-Milwaukee, voted against the bill. He said it wasn’t necessary, although he would have voted for it if Republicans hadn’t “gutted” the emergency contraception bill.

Committee passage makes both bills available to the Republican-controlled Assembly for a vote. The Senate has approved the morning-after bill, but would have to approve the Assembly changes before the measure could go to Gov. Jim Doyle, who can sign the bill into law or veto it.

Josh Wescott, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Judy Robson, D-Beloit, said Robson wants the emergency contraception bill to pass in its original form.

He said Robson plans to work with a number of Assembly Republicans who co-sponsored the original bill.

“We think it speaks volumes we’re dealing with a fringe,” Wescott said.

He had no comment on the fate of the coercive abortion bill if it reaches the Senate.