[JURIST] A federal judge on Thursday issued a temporary injunction [order, PDF] against Arkansas’ suspension of Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood [advocacy website]. Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson [official profile] terminated [AP report] the Medicaid funding last year following national controversy ignited by video recordings of Planned Parenthood’s practices. That same year, District Judge Kristine Baker forced the state to provide funding to three Medicaid patients who brought suit against the organization. In Thursday’s ruling, Baker expanded the ruling to apply to all future Medicaid patients in the state. Baker found that such defunding irreparably harms patients by depriving them of their right to choose their family planning services provider. While Planned Parenthood praised the ruling, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge [official profile] expressed her disappointment. Arkansas has already appealed the matter to the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit [official website] for further review.

There has been a recent slew of state laws attempting to cut back on women’s access to abortion. In July the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] and Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] against an Arizona law that would potentially prevent low-income women from obtaining healthcare from their provider of choice. Earlier in July in a US district judge issued a preliminary injunction [JURIST report] against a Florida law intended to cut state funding to clinics administering abortions. That same week a federal judge placed an injunction [JURIST report] on an Indiana law that would have banned women from seeking abortion procedures when they are based on race, sex, or the potential for or actual diagnosis of a disability in the fetus. Recently the US Supreme Court ruled [opinion, PDF] 5-3 in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt [SCOTUSblog materials] that a Texas law [HB2 text] imposing certain requirements on abortion clinics and doctors creates an undue burden on access to abortion, and is therefore unconstitutional [JURIST report]. A collection of Texas abortion providers challenged provisions of HB2 requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital and requiring abortion clinics to conform to state standards for ambulatory surgical centers on the grounds that such requirements violated the Fourteenth Amendment as interpreted by the Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey [text]. The Indiana statute contained a similar “admitting privilege” provision.