Late-Term Abortion Ban Overruled in Va.

A federal appeals court struck down Virginia’s ban on a late-term abortion procedure, ruling that the law burdened a woman’s right to choose, Reuters reports. Although the Supreme Court upheld a similar federal law last year, the appeals court ruled that Virginia's ban went further because it provided no protection for doctors who performed the procedure by mistake.

Critics had called the 2003 state law, which never took effect, one of the country’s most restrictive abortion measures. “Federal courts are seeing through these thinly veiled attempts to undermine a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion,” said the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York, which challenged the law. (More abortion stories.)