Judge Allows Arizona Law Restricting Non-Surgical Abortions to Take Effect
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US district judge David C Bury on Monday refused to stop the new rules just hours before they were to take effect. Opponents of the rules said they would continue to challenge the restrictions in court.
Bury made his ruling in response to a lawsuit by Planned Parenthood Arizona and the private abortion clinic Tucson Women’s Center, who say the rules severely infringe on a woman’s ability to have an abortion. He was asked to grant an injunction that would have blocked the rules from taking effect.
The rules were released in January by the Arizona department of health services. They ban women from taking the most common abortion-inducing drug – RU-486 – after the seventh week of pregnancy. Existing rules allow women to take the abortion pill through nine weeks of pregnancy.
Planned Parenthood estimates that 800 women would have had to get surgical abortions in 2012 if the rules were in effect then. An attorney for the organization also told the judge last week that the new rules could force its Flagstaff, Arizona, abortion clinic to suspend operations.
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