JACKSON, Miss., April 16 (UPI) -- A federal judge has blocked a portion of a state law that would have forced the only abortion clinic in Mississippi to close.
While not final, the judge's action Monday prevented the law from going into effect while a decision on its constitutionality is determined and kept Mississippi from becoming the first state without an abortion clinic, at least temporarily, The New York Times reported.
The 2012 law requires doctors at abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. During debate, lawmakers said the requirement was meant to protect the health of women.
Neither of the two doctors who perform the most abortions at the Jackson Women's Health Organization has local hospital admitting privileges, the Times said. The clinic sued, arguing that the law was a thinly veiled attempt to bar abortion in the state and was unconstitutional.
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Soon after it went into effect, U.S. District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III ruled that the law's procedures should be allowed go forward so long as the clinic remained open during the process.
The clinic physicians couldn't meet the law's requirements and Mississippi's Health Department scheduled a hearing for later this week, when the clinic's license, in all likelihood, would have been revoked, the Times said.
"Closing its doors would -- as the state seems to concede in this argument -- force Mississippi women to leave Mississippi to obtain a legal abortion," Jordan wrote in his opinion Monday.
He said the state's position "would result in a patchwork system where constitutional rights are available in some states but not others."
