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A group of women's health care providers filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to overturn a number of Virginia's abortion regulations in light of a landmark 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The lawsuit filed in federal court challenges Virginia laws, some decades old, that restrict who can provide an abortion and how it can be provided. The plaintiffs argue the laws are unconstitutional obstacles to care that are not supported by medical evidence. (6/20)

The suit contends that some of those restrictions, such as a ­24-hour waiting period before an abortion and a state-mandated abdominal ultrasound, are medically unnecessary and therefore unconstitutional in the wake of a 2016 Supreme Court ruling in a Texas case. In that case, the justices found that certain restrictions Texas had imposed in the name of protecting women’s health were medically unjustified and intended to make abortions harder to obtain. (Vozzella, 6/20)

“The laws we are challenging today are shutting down clinics, delaying care, increasing costs, and piling one burden on top of another in an attempt to regulate the fundamental protections of Roe v. Wade out of existence,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. (Hellmann, 6/20)

In a 5-3 opinion in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, a case that arose in Texas, the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot create a burden for women seeking abortions by passing unnecessarily restrictive health regulations. (Moomaw, 6/20)