- Texas lost a bid to ban abortion.
- The US state wanted to reinstate a law banning the termination of second-trimester pregnancies.
- The appeals court found that the law places an undue burden on a woman.
The state of Texas on Tuesday lost its bid before a US appeals court to reinstate a law that would have effectively banned the most common abortion procedure used by doctors for terminating second-trimester pregnancies.
A three-judge panel of the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans sided with abortion rights activists in affirming a 2017 lower-court decision that struck down the law and temporarily barred its enforcement.
Tuesday's ruling, unless overturned on further appeal, makes the injunction against the abortion restriction permanent.
The 2-1 majority appellate opinion held that the Republican-enacted legislation, known as Senate Bill 8, "unduly burdens a woman's constitutionally protected right" to terminate her own pregnancy before the foetus is considered viable.
The opinion was written by appellate Judge James Dennis, who was appointed to the 5th Circuit by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. It upheld an earlier ruling by US District Judge Lee Yeakel of Austin, appointed by Republican President George W Bush.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, named as a defendant in the lawsuit challenging the abortion measure, said his office was analysing the 5th Circuit's decision "and evaluating all options for further review".
Foetal pain
The measure outlawed the standard abortion method used after 15 weeks of pregnancy - dilation and evacuation, or D&E - unless the physician first performed a separate, additional procedure in the woman's body to bring about the demise of the foetus.
That requirement, Dennis wrote, "forces abortion providers to act contrary to their medical judgement and the best interest of their patient" by performing extra procedures that "are dangerous, painful, invasive and potentially experimental".
The Texas law refers to the D&E procedure, involving the use of suction and forceps to bring foetal tissue through the woman's cervix, as a "dismemberment abortion", a non-medical term eschewed by doctors.
The law's advocates say its restrictions promote the state's interest in preventing foetal pain, but Dennis in his opinion wrote: "We find little merit in this argument."
As the appellate decision noted, major medical organisations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the American Medical Association, have concluded that foetal pain is impossible before 24 weeks of gestation - well beyond the point when abortions are almost never performed.
Although D&Es are the safest abortion method after about 15 weeks of pregnancy - roughly two weeks into the second trimester - nearly 90% of all abortions are performed in the first trimester, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.
Texas, the most populous Republican-dominated state, has been at the forefront of efforts to impose abortion restrictions.
Whole Woman's Health, the lead plaintiff challenging the D&E ban, also led a legal fight in 2016 that ended in the US Supreme Court's striking down a Texas abortion law that had shuttered nearly half the state's clinics by imposing strict regulations on doctors and facilities.
Similar D&E abortion bans in other states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Oklahoma, have also been struck down by the courts, according to the Centre for Reproductive Rights.
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