D Healthcare Daily has the details of today’s ruling:
The suit’s plaintiffs asked the court to block the provisions “with the most immediate, and indeed very far-reaching, impact on women’s health,” set to take effect on Tuesday. Those restrictions: a requirement that physicians who provide abortions must obtain admitting privileges at a local hospital, and restrictions on the use of medication abortion.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled the admitting privileges requirement is unconstitutional and poses an undue burden on women seeking an abortion. It “does not bear a rational relationship to the legitimate right of the State in preserving and promoting fetal life or a woman’s health and, in any event, places a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus and is thus an undue burden to her,” he wrote.
Despite the plaintiff’s victory with regard to admitting privileges, Yeakel upheld a portion of the law that puts additional restrictions on pregnancy-ending drugs, saying the requirement “is clearly more burdensome to a woman” than the current protocol. But the plaintiffs failed to meet the threshold to show it would be an undue burden for women.
