AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Planned Parenthood is suing Texas over a new ban on a common abortion procedure that other Republican-controlled states have also tried outlawing in recent years.
The lawsuit filed Thursday comes one year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down sweeping anti-abortion measures in Texas that prompted more than half of the state's abortion clinics to close after 2013.
Texas Republicans were undeterred by the ruling, and Gov. Greg Abbott began signing new abortion restrictions in June.
Planned Parenthood and other abortion-rights groups are now asking a federal judge in Austin to block a new Texas law that bans a second-trimester abortion procedure known as dilation and evacuation.
Similar laws are in effect in Mississippi and West Virginia but have been blocked by court rulings in four other states.