Washington (CNN) Justice Clarence Thomas said that while he agreed with the Supreme Court's decision Friday not to hear a case on surgical abortions in Alabama, he wants the high court to consider rolling back historical precedent on abortion -- an encouraging message to the slew of conservative state legislatures who have rolled out abortion bans this year.

An Alabama law prohibiting a type of surgical abortion will remain blocked after justices declined to consider the case -- a separate measure from Alabama's near-total ban on abortion that takes effect on November 15.

But Thomas made clear that it was time for the court to address abortion, as red and blue states have clamored to codify abortion on their terms in anticipation of a possible reckoning with Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

The West Alabama Women's Center, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, argues the law prohibiting physicians from performing what are clinically referred to as dilation and evacuation abortions would outlaw "the most commonly used method for performing pre-viability second trimester abortions."

In court briefs they argue that "starting around 15 weeks," dilation and evacuation is the "only abortion method that can be performed outside a hospital; it accounts for 95% of second-trimester abortions nationally and 99% of abortions after 15 weeks in Alabama." They also dispute the robustness of the health exception for women.

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