Washington ? Legislation intended to make it harder for people to erase their debts in bankruptcy court was rejected Thursday in the House, scuttled by a dispute about how the law would apply to fines against abortion protesters.

Conservative Republicans turned against the House leadership, President Bush and their business and banking contributors in rejecting the legislation, which they feared would curtail abortion protesting. Many Democrats also opposed the bill on grounds that it would hurt poor working people.

It was the second time House leaders failed to bring up a House-Senate bankruptcy compromise favored by the Senate and the White House.

Anti-abortion Republicans blamed Senate Democrats for forcing them to vote against the bankruptcy legislation that came out of the House-Senate conference committee. Senate Democrats had inserted language into the compromise that would ban abortion protesters from using bankruptcy to avoid paying court fines for blocking clinics if they knowingly violated the law.

The anti-abortion Republicans blocked the bill in July because of that provision, and did so again Thursday, saying the law would be used against even legal abortion protests.

Banking and credit card companies have been pushing the legislation for five years, but it has stalled each year in Congress. The House-Senate compromise reached this year represented the closest the measure has come to passage.

The House refused to consider the compromise by a vote of 243-172. Eighty-seven Republicans and 155 Democrats voted against the measure.

Under current law, Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code allows people to escape paying any of their credit card and other debts. Filings under Chapter 13 force people to repay debts over time in accordance with a court-approved plan.

Right now, a bankruptcy judge or a private attorney appointed by the Justice Department usually decides whether someone qualifies for dissolution of debts or should be forced to repay under a reorganization plan.

The legislation that died Thursday would have applied a new standard in which, if a debtor had sufficient income to repay at least 25 percent of the debt over five years or earned at least the median income for his state, he would be forced into a Chapter 13 repayment plan.