U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane on Monday granted the second nationwide preliminary injunction against new federal restrictions that bar taxpayer-funded family planning clinics from referring patients to abortion providers or from being housed in the same place as abortion services.

The judge signaled from the bench last week that he planned to grant the injunction sought by 20 states, including Oregon, as well as the District of Columbia, Planned Parenthood and the American Medical Association. But at the time, he said he was reluctant to set "national health care'’ policy as a federal judge based in Eugene. The government urged any injunction be limited to the plaintiffs in the case.

Ultimately, McShane didn’t restrict the injunction, temporarily blocking the Trump administration controversial Title X family planning program rules, according to his 32-page written opinion.

The so-called “gag rule,’’ he wrote, would “handcuff’’ medical providers from referring a woman who doesn’t want to continue her pregnancy to an abortion provider, essentially making medical professionals “deaf and dumb when counseling a client.’’

Given that the harm would occur in every state and there’s a significant likelihood that the plaintiffs will prevail in showing the rule is unlawful, McShane said a nationwide injunction was appropriate.

Gov. Kate Brown hailed the decision as “a huge win for women in families in Oregon and across the nation.”

“The government has no place in conversations between women and their doctors, and I am pleased that a federal judge agreed that the Trump administration’s reckless rule should be blocked,” Brown said in a statement.

Last Thursday, a federal judge from the Eastern District of Washington issued a similar injunction. A day later, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services argued that the ruling by U.S. District Judge Stanley A. Bastian negated a need for McShane to issue a preliminary injunction as well, saying the plaintiffs in the Oregon suit could no longer show they would face “irreparable harm.’’

The federal government is considering whether to appeal the order in Washington and whether to seek to halt that injunction pending appeal, attorneys R. Charlie Merritt and Andrew M. Bernie wrote in court filings Friday on behalf of the U.S. Justice Department. They urged McShane to hold off issuing a ruling, unless the Washington judge’s preliminary injunction is vacated or placed on hold.

But McShane said the motion before him deserved a separate ruling.

“Planned Parenthood provides service for nearly half of the entire Title X program,’’ McShane wrote. “They are a plaintiff in this action, not the action pending before Judge Bastian.’’

The Trump administration’s Title X “gag rule'' was scheduled to take effect this Friday.

“At a time in our history where government is assessing how we can improve and lower the costs of medical care to all Americans, the Final Rule would create a class of women who are barred from receiving care consistent with accepted and established professional medical standards,’’ McShane wrote.

The record before him showed that low-income health care clients would suffer harm from the controversial rules, he said.

“It will result in less contraceptive services, more unintended pregnancies, less early breast cancer detection, less screening for cervical cancer, less HIV screening, and less testing for sexually transmitted disease,’’ his ruling said.

He called the Department of Health and Human Services’ response to the likely negative health outcomes “one of silence and indifference.’’

Bernie had argued last week in Oregon that the Department of Health and Human Services believes the rules best reflect Section 1008 of the Title X statute, which prohibits abortion as a method of family planning. The rules, he argued, also are supported by 14 other states and are in line with the 1991 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Rust v. Sullivan, which upheld prior U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regulations that prohibited employees in federally funded family-planning facilities from counseling a patient on abortion.

McShane pointed to Congress’ direction that all “pregnancy counseling be non-directive’’ and found the government’s “gag rule’’ represents the essence of counseling that is directed, meaning it steers or directs a patient toward a particular option over another.

Under the rule, a health care provider would have to refer a woman who doesn’t want to continue her pregnancy to either prenatal care or an adoption agency.

“One would expect to find such a process not in a federal program serving millions of clients, but in a Kafka novel,’’ McShane wrote. “This is madness.’’

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @maxoregonian

Visit subscription.oregonlive.com/newsletters to get Oregonian/OregonLive journalism delivered to your email inbox.