abortion

Last week, the Iowa Supreme Court struck down that state's ban on doctors prescribing abortion-inducing pills to patients via video teleconferencing, the Associated Press reports. Iowa was the first state to allow doctors to dispense abortion-inducing medications through telemedicine.

The court ruled that it placed an undue burden on a woman's right to get an abortion. The Iowa Board of Medicine enacted a rule requiring a doctor be physically present with a patient before prescribing such drugs. However, the board had allowed telemedicine for other procedures.

The Fourth Circuit struck down North Carolina's requirement that doctors and ultrasound technicians perform an ultrasound at least four hours but not more than 72 hours before the abortion is to take place, display an image of the sonogram and "and specifically describe the fetus to any pregnant woman seeking an abortion, even if the woman actively 'averts her eyes' and 'refuses to hear,'" Slate's Dahlia Lithwick reports. The court ruled the requirement violates the First Amendment rights of healthcare providers. Doctors who did not follow the law could face damages and lose their licenses to practice, Lithwick also notes.

Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who authored the opinion for the panel, is a conservative jurist and was shortlisted for John Roberts' seat as chief justice of the Supreme Court, Lithwick notes.

The ruling presents a circuit split with the Fifth and Eighth Circuits, which have upheld similar laws.

A federal judge struck down an Arkansas law banning most abortions starting at 12 weeks of pregnancy, if a fetal heartbeat could be detected by standard ultrasound, as unconstitutional, Reuters reports: "U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright ruled that the law 'impermissibly infringes a woman's Fourteenth Amendment right to elect to terminate a pregnancy before viability' of the fetus, as established by the U.S. Supreme Court."

The decision lets stand the requirement that women seeking abortions must undergo ultrasounds to determine if fetal heartbeats are present, Reuters also reports.