Federal judge slaps down Texas abortion law

A federal judge invalidated a major Texas abortion regulation that would have shut down 19 licensed clinics next week, ruling that it created “a brutally effective system” designed to close abortion facilities, not to improve women’s health as state lawyers had argued.
U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel of Austin ruled that a key provision in House Bill 2, passed last summer in the second of two raucous special legislative sessions, imposed an impermissible burden that blocked access to abortion for “women throughout Texas.”