In large parts of the country, women’s access to safe and legal abortion care is increasingly coming to depend on the willingness of judges to rigorously examine and reject new (and medically unnecessary) restrictions imposed by Republican legislatures.

In just that sort of searching review, a federal judge last week struck down as unconstitutional an Alabama law requiring doctors at abortion clinics to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. The requirement — advertised, falsely, as necessary to protect women’s health — is one of the main strategies being deployed nationally by opponents of abortion rights to shrink the already inadequate number of abortion providers.

The decision, by Judge Myron Thompson of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, followed a 10-day hearing. The ruling is a big victory for Alabama women and should be an instructive model for other courts.

The starting point for Judge Thompson’s analysis was the Supreme Court’s 1992 Casey decision, which said a state abortion regulation goes too far when it imposes an “undue burden” on a woman’s ability to choose to have an abortion before a fetus is viable. The judge said that despite the state’s effort to minimize the rule’s impact, it would shut down three of Alabama’s five abortion clinics. All five provide only early abortions, well before viability. He noted that the rule would actually harm women, especially poor women, by forcing them to wait longer and travel longer distances for the procedure.