Tough Abortion Law Scaled Back

A dozen regulations in one of the nation’s toughest abortion laws were struck down by a federal judge who said the rules imposed an unconstitutional burden on people seeking and providing abortions. U.S. District Judge William H. Barbour Jr. in Jackson, Miss., issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting Mississippi from enforcing the new rules, generally aimed at abortion doctors and clinics. Barbour did retain two segments of the law: that doctors who perform 100 or more abortions a year must both license their practices as abortion clinics and must hire a registered nurse. The one rule that had most troubled Barbour, he said, was one that let the state seize clinic medical records for license investigations without deleting patient information.