Kentucky Restriction on Common Abortion Procedure Blocked

Kentucky can’t enforce a state law that would require women to induce fetal demise before undergoing a dilation and evacuation—the most common kind of second trimester abortion—after the Sixth Circuit found the statute unconstitutional.

The law unduly burdens an individual’s right to elect to have an abortion prior to viability, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said Tuesday.

Several other states—including Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Mississippi—have passed similar laws, and in every challenge brought to date, courts have enjoined the statutes on the same basis, the court said.

The state argued that the burden ...