The ruling by U.S. District Judge David C. Bury means the new restrictions will take effect Tuesday.
The rules ban pill-induced abortions after seven weeks of pregnancy, compared with the current nine-week restriction.
Bury made his ruling in response to a lawsuit by Planned Parenthood Arizona and the private abortion clinic Tucson Women's Center, who say the rules severely infringe on a woman's ability to have an abortion. He was asked to grant an injunction that would have blocked the rules from taking effect.
The rules were released in January by the Arizona Department of Health Services. They ban women from taking the most common abortion-inducing drug — RU-486 — after the seventh week of pregnancy. Existing rules allow women to take the abortion pill through nine weeks of pregnancy.
Planned Parenthood estimates that 800 women would have had to get surgical abortions in 2012 if the rules were in effect then. An attorney for the organization also told the judge Wednesday that the new rules could force its Flagstaff abortion clinic to suspend operations.
In his ruling, the judge acknowledged that the new rules will make it more difficult for some women in Arizona, especially those in the northern part of the state, to get abortions as they have to travel farther and make more trips to clinics. But he said they aren't obstacles big enough to show that the rules should be blocked.
"The court finds that the injunction is not in the public interest," he said.
Attorney Mike Tyron, arguing the case for the state, described the rules as a simple shift in abortion regulations that amount to a minor inconvenience for women — and are not the heavy-handed change that opponents make them out to be.
The Arizona Legislature in the past few years has approved a number of aggressive anti-abortion measures. A House of Representatives-approved bill that is being considered by the Senate would allow for surprise, warrantless inspections of abortion clinics. Proponents of the bill say it protects women from clinics that are not up to health standards. Opponents say it puts women at risk and violates their privacy.
