Virginia abortion clinics remained open for business despite a new state law banning a type of late-term procedure.
The law took effect Wednesday, hours after being spared from a court injunction by a federal appeals judge.Abortion clinics and doctors obtained the injunction a week ago from U.S. District Judge Robert E. Payne, who agreed the law was so vague that it would outlaw common abortion procedures.
His order would have kept the law off the books pending a court challenge.
But the state attorney general's office appealed the injunction to Judge J. Michael Luttig of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, and he reversed Payne's order.
The new law bans the procedure in which the fetus is partly delivered through the birth canal and then destroyed.