A federal court judge on Friday struck down North Carolina’s controversial law requiring women seeking abortions to be shown an ultrasound image narrated by a doctor. U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles ruled that the provision of the 2011 law was an unconstitutional violation of First Amendment rights because it imposes state-mandated speech on medical professionals. Eagles called the law “overbroad,” and said it didn’t sufficiently protect women who didn’t want to be exposed to that information. “It is an impermissible attempt to compel these providers to deliver the state’s message in favor of childbirth and against abortion.”

Judge Catherine C. Eagles wrote in her ruling that the law, approved by the state General Assembly in 2011, “is an effort by the state to require health care providers to deliver information in support of the state’s philosophic and social position discouraging abortion and encouraging childbirth, it is content-based, and it is not sufficiently narrowly tailored to survive strict scrutiny.”

Eagles had already blocked the law from taking effect in October 2011 while waiting to hear arguments concerning its effects.

The law was challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), as well as its North Carolina state chapter, the Center for Reproductive Rights (CPR), and Planned Parenthood Federation of America.