The Text of Bills

The chief search mechanisms for U.S. legislation all lead the user to the full text of the bills or resolutions searched for. More detailed descriptions about all of them are available in the "Tools for the Road" section. In declining order of preference, the best sources include:

Thomas

All of the Thomas searches, whether by summary or full text or hot-bills, lead the searcher to the full text of the bill, resolution, or amendment, often to several versions of it reflecting its course through the legislative process. Browsing in "vetoed bills," for example, we find the just-vetoed "Partial birth abortion bill." Selecting it produces introductory information, most of the items representing links to further info:

     H.R.1833
     SPONSOR: Rep Canady , (introduced 06/14/95) 
     RELATED BILL(S): S.939 
     HOT LEGISLATION 
       A bill to amend title 18, United States Code, to ban 
       partial-birth abortions. 
    TITLE(S) 
    STATUS:
      FLOOR ACTIONS ONLY 
      DETAILED LEGISLATIVE HISTORY 
      CONGRESSIONAL RECORD PAGE REFERENCES 
    DIGEST 
    COMMITTEE(S):
      REFERRAL, REPORTING, ORIGIN, SUBCOMMITTEE(S) 
      OTHER COMMITTEE INFORMATION
    COSPONSOR(S) 
    AMENDMENT(S) 
    SUBJECT(S) 
**  FULL TEXT VERSION(S) 

Selecting the last option yields a list of bill versions:

    Versions of Bill Number H.R.1833

    1 . Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1995 
          (Introduced in the House) [H.R.1833]
    2 . Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1995 
          (Reported in the House) [H.R.1833]
    3 . Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1995 
          (Introduced in the Senate) [H.R.1833]
    4 . Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1995 
          (Placed in the Senate) [H.R.1833]
    5 . Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1995 
          (Passed by the House) [H.R.1833]
    6 . Resolved, That the bill from the House of Representatives
        (H.R. 1833) entitled `An Act to amend title 18, United 
        States Code, to ban partial-birth abortions', do pass 
        with the following (Engrossed Senate Amendment) [H.R.1833]
    7 . Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 1995 (Enrolled Bill 
        (Sent to President)) [H.R.1833]

each of which leads to full text.
http://thomas.loc.gov/

GPO Access

A fuller description is available. GPO Access is a little less informative than Thomas, though it adds the benefit of PDF distribution for those who prefer that. Searching "partial birth abortion" in the bills database for the 104th Congress yields:

    Total Hits: 40

   [1] CATALOG OF AVAILABLE BILLS AND RESOLUTIONS 
       Size: 1174839 , Score: 1000 , TEXT 
   [2] H.R. 1833 (rh) To amend title 18, United States Code, 
       to ban partial-birth abortions. 
       Size: 8915 , Score: 1000 , TEXT , PDF 
   [3]S. 939 (pcs) To amend title 18, United States Code, 
      to ban partial-birth abortions. 
      Size: 3833 , Score: 717 , TEXT , PDF 
   [4]H.R. 1833 (eh) To amend title 18, United States Code,
      to ban partial-birth abortions. 
      Size: 3282 , Score: 704 , TEXT , PDF 

It is less clear what each of these is, but each produces a full text version on demand.
http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/aaces002.html

House Legislative Database

House bills can be searched by any of the mechanisms allowed by the House WAIS server to produce the full text of the legislation. The Will.T.Bill interface produces similar results more easily, but only for those using WAIS-conversant browsers or browsers with a WAIS client configured.
http://www.house.gov/legproc.html

LegiSlate

LegiSlate does include a full text version of every bill, amendment, and resolution, and the menu generated by every bill includes, e.g.:

    H.R. 2949:  Bill Text - List of Versions Published
    H.R. 2949:  Bill Text - Most Recent Version

But the full text option is restricted to subscribers only.
gopher://gopher.legislate.com:70/11/Legislation/104