A federal judge in Mississippi on Friday temporarily blocked a state law that effectively banned abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy.

Judge Carlton W. Reeves of the Federal District Court in Jackson issued a preliminary injunction against the ban, delivering another judicial rebuke of laws that seek to forbid abortions early in pregnancy — a type of measure that has gained traction across the South this year. The decision was also at least the second since November that limited Mississippi’s efforts to restrict abortions.

The law “threatens immediate harm to women’s rights” and “prevents a woman’s free choice, which is central to personal dignity and autonomy,” Judge Reeves wrote in his ruling. “This injury outweighs any interest the state might have in banning abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat.”

The Mississippi law, which was to take effect on July 1, would have barred abortions once health care providers were able to detect the pulsing of what would become a fetus’s heart, which can be as early as six weeks into pregnancy. The law was just one of the year’s so-called fetal heartbeat bills that, supporters and critics alike said, would effectively ban abortions before many women even knew they were pregnant.