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Supreme Court Rejects Alabama Bid to Bar Common Abortion Method

  • Law targeted procedure used in second trimester of pregnancy
  • Thomas says court should reconsider abortion-rights rulings
Pro-choice activists holds signs during a rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington.

Pro-choice activists holds signs during a rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington.

Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/Bloomberg
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The U.S. Supreme Court steered clear of the nation’s fractious abortion debate, refusing to consider Alabama’s effort to ban the most common method used for women in their second trimester of pregnancy.

The state was seeking to revive a ban on a method, known as dilation and evacuation, that involves dismembering the fetus and then removing it from the uterus. Alabama called the procedure a “particularly gruesome type of abortion” that states have the power to prohibit.