A Kansas judge for the Shawnee County District Court [official website] blocked a law on Thursday that would have effectively banned most second-trimester abortions performed in the state. Judge Larry Hendricks stated [AP report] that the first-in-the-nation law would have created too large of an obstacle for women in the state seeking an abortion. Opponents call the process “dismemberment abortion” while reproductive health advocates call it dilation and evacuation. This type of procedure is the most commonly used abortion procedure for in the second trimester. The new law would ban doctors, with exceptions, from using certain instruments to remove the live fetus from the womb in pieces. The state’s lawyers argued during the lawsuit that doctors could perform safe abortions without resorting to this type of procedure. The Judge has put the law on hold while he considers two other Kansas abortion lawsuits.

Reproductive rights [JURIST backgrounder] have remained a divisive issue throughout the country for decades. In March, the West Virginia Legislature [official website] overrode the governor’s veto, passing a bill [text, HB 2586] banning abortion after 20 weeks. In February Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood [official website] asked the US Supreme Court [official website] to allow the state to enforce [JURIST report] an abortion law that was declared unconstitutional by a federal court in 2014. The Montana Supreme Court [official website] in February reversed [JURIST report] a decision granting summary judgment to Planned Parenthood [official website] in a case challenging two Montana abortion parental consent laws, ordering further proceedings. In January the US House of Representatives [official website] passed a bill [JURIST report] that would ban abortions supported by federal funding.