These laws include a ban on abortions based solely on the sex of the baby, including requirements that doctors seek the medical records of any woman seeking an abortion who knows the sex of her unborn child.
One of the enjoined laws regulates the preservation and disposal of tissue from aborted babies. Another law requires doctors performing abortions on patients under 16 years old to inform police.
Another enjoined law prohibits a second-trimester abortion method known as "dilation and evacuation," by which an unborn baby is dismembered. Backers of the procedure say it is common and safe for second-trimester abortions, while foes consider it "dismemberment abortion."
In Arkansas in 2015, the abortion procedure was used in 638 out of 3,771 abortions, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette said.
The appeals court dismissed part of the case involving requirements that doctors who perform abortion be board-certified or board-eligible.
Little Rock Family Planning Services, Arkansas' only surgical abortion clinic, had previously said that it could have to close if the laws were to be enforced. Only one physician at the facility was OB-GYN board certified or eligible, and only rarely worked there at the time the law was passed.
The abortion clinic has since hired a board-certified OB-GYN, and said its objections have been rendered moot. The appellate court dismissed that part of the case and ordered Baker to lift her order blocking the law's enforcement, the Associated Press reports.
Rutledge previously defended the board certification requirement as being in the interest of women's health and safety. Critics argued that it was extreme and would limit women's access to abortion.
Stephanie Sharp, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas attorney general, commented on the actions against the four laws.
"Those regulations protect unborn girls from systematic discrimination, protect children from predators and sex traffickers, require the respectful treatment of human remains, and prohibit a particularly barbaric and inhumane late-term abortion practice," said Sharp. She voiced confidence that the Eighth Circuit would overturn the injunctions.
In August the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Baker's 2017 injunction against the laws and asked her to use a different legal standard, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.
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Arkansas currently has a 20-week abortion ban, enacted in 2013, which has yet to be challenged in court.
In February 2019, state Governor Asa Hutchinson signed a "trigger law" which would ban most abortions in the event the Supreme Court overturns the 1973 Roe v. Wade court decision that recognized abortion as a constitutional right in the United States.
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