ATLANTA — In an often-biting opinion, a federal judge on Tuesday blocked a Mississippi law that sought to forbid most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Judge Carlton W. Reeves of Federal District Court in Jackson, the Mississippi capital, wrote that the law “disregards” the 14th Amendment’s promise of due process and defied the United States Supreme Court’s existing precedents on abortion rights.

“The state chose to pass a law it knew was unconstitutional to endorse a decades-long campaign, fueled by national interest groups, to ask the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade,” the judge wrote. “This court follows the commands of the Supreme Court and the dictates of the United States Constitution, rather than the disingenuous calculations of the Mississippi Legislature.”

He added, in a footnote, that the Legislature’s “professed interest in ‘women’s health’ is pure gaslighting” and that Mississippi officials challenge abortion rights but “choose not to lift a finger to address the tragedies lurking on the other side of the delivery room: our alarming infant and maternal mortality rates.”