Judge Baker has yet to make the findings requested by the appeals court. Once she does, further appeals are likely. Planned Parenthood said it would again ask Judge Baker to block the law while the case moves forward.

Arkansas has three abortion clinics. One, in Little Rock, offers both medication and surgical abortions. The others, in Little Rock and Fayetteville, offer only medication abortions.

In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the local Planned Parenthood affiliate said it contacted every qualified doctor it could identify. None of them, the group said, was willing to enter into the contract required by the law. This was unsurprising, Judge Baker found, as doctors in Arkansas who perform abortions “risk being ostracized from their communities and face harassment and violence toward themselves, their family, and their private practices.”

Arkansas officials told the Supreme Court that Planned Parenthood had not tried hard enough or told the doctors how much it was willing to pay.

If the law were to go into effect, Planned Parenthood told the justices, only surgical abortions would be available in Arkansas. “This will particularly affect women who strongly prefer medication abortion,” the group told the Supreme Court, “including those who find it traumatic to have instruments placed in their vaginas because they are victims of rape, incest, or domestic violence, as well as women for whom medication abortion is medically indicated and safer than surgical abortion.”

In their Supreme Court brief in the case, Planned Parenthood of Arkansas & Eastern Oklahoma v. Jegley, No. 17-935, Arkansas officials responded that “there is no right to choose medication abortion.”

The Arkansas law is quite similar to one in Texas that was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2016.

Writing for the majority in the 5-3 decision, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the Texas law, which required doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, placed “a substantial obstacle” in the path of women seeking abortions and amounted to an “undue burden on abortion access” in violation of the Constitution.