Alia Beard Rau

The Arizona Republic

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to weigh in on a controversial Arizona law that would have restricted medication abortions.

Planned Parenthood Arizona and Tucson Women's Center filed the federal lawsuit alleging the law wasn't intended to protect women's health, as it supporters claimed, but rather to keep them from accessing legal abortions, particularly early in pregnancy.

About half of all abortions in Arizona are performed using medications.

"These restrictions go against more than 14 years of medical research," said Planned Parenthood of Arizona president and CEO Bryan Howard. "Proponents of this law say it protects women, but actually does otherwise. It's 2014 — it's well past time medical decisions should be left between a woman and her physician."

The regulation required:

• The drugs commonly used to induce abortions only be given in the dosage approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration

•That both doses of the drugs had to be taken at a clinic instead of one being taken at home.

•And that they only be administered up to seven weeks into a pregnancy, instead of the more commonly practiced nine weeks.

The American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists asked the courts to block the law, saying it "impedes physician discretion and contravenes medical ethics by outlawing the safest, most effective method of medical abortion and relegating women to an outdated, inferior treatment."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued a preliminary injunction preventing the law from going into effect until the case is concluded. The state appealed to the Supreme Court, seeking to overturn the injunction. The injunction will now remain in effect while the underlying case proceeds.

Several other states have implemented similar regulations with mixed results.

Ohio and Texas have similar laws requiring the use of only FDA-approved protocols for drug abortions that withstood court challenges. Courts in Oklahoma and North Dakota have blocked similar laws.