NEW YORK, Aug 26 (AFP) - A federal judge ruled Thursday that a ban on a type of late-term abortion violates the US Constitution.
The New York judge ruled on a federal ban, signed into law in 2003 by US President George W. Bush.
A judge in San Francisco also found the ban unconstitutional earlier this month, and a Nebraska court is considering the ban's legality.
The Republican-controlled Congress passed the law in October, making it the first major restriction on abortion rights since the US Supreme Court established the right to abortion in its historic 1973 Roe versus Wade decision.
Within hours of the measure becoming law, judges in the three states blocked it from taking force.
New York judge Richard Casey based his ruling on the law's lack of an exception to protect the health of the mother, he explained in his decision.
The case was brought on behalf of seven physicians by the National Abortion Federation of abortion providers and the American Civil Liberties Union.
The groups claimed Congress had written a law so broad that it banned some 95 percent of second-trimester abortions. The law provided penalties of two years in prison for any physician practicing such abortions, including attempts to save the life of the mother.
The government could, if it wishes, seek an appeal from Casey's decision, as it did in the San Francisco decision.
Spokeswoman Monica Goodling said the Justice Department was reviewing Casey's opinion on the banned procedure, which the law's defenders call "partial-birth abortion."
"In this case, as well as in others in California and Nebraska, the Justice Department vigorously defended the law passed by Congress to prevent partial birth abortions," she said in a statement.
"President Bush has said this law 'will end an abhorrent practice and continue to build a culture of life in America.'
"As judge Casey found in his opinion, this procedure is 'gruesome, brutal, barbaric and uncivilized,' and causes partially-born children 'severe pain,'" she said.