As Mississippi state legislators introduced several extreme anti-choice bills last week, Gov. Phil Bryant (R) declared that his goal is to “end abortion” in the state.

In his “state of the state” speech, Bryant said, “On this unfortunate anniversary of Roe v. Wade, my goal is to end abortion in Mississippi.”

The state could see an end to safe abortion access if Mississippi’s last abortion clinic, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, were to close. The clinic is still locked in a court battle over a 2012 law requiring the clinic’s physicians to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. The clinic was unable to comply with the new law when all area hospitals rejected its applications, but it remains open while the courts consider the constitutionality of the law.

Bryant also said last year that his goal was to shut down the state’s last clinic, and Rep. Sam Mims (R-McComb), who sponsored the admitting privileges bill, told Politico that the intent of the legislation was to lead to fewer abortions being performed in the state. Pro-choice advocates argue that public statements like these about the law’s intent should hurt the law’s chances in court.

Meanwhile, Mississippi legislators introduced several bills that would severely restrict women’s access to safe abortion care even if the last clinic wins its appeals.

A house bill sponsored by Rep. Andy Gipson (R-Braxton) would ban abortion after 20 weeks, as would a senate bill sponsored by Sen. Phillip Gandy (R-Waynesboro). A senate bill sponsored by Sen. Joey Fillingane (R-Sumrall) would ban abortion after 12 weeks or if a fetal heartbeat is detected.

Bans on abortion at 20 weeks or earlier are considered a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade. Federal courts have blocked such bans in Arizona and North Dakota, but that hasn’t stopped state or federal lawmakers from trying: So far this year, 20-week bans have been proposed in Kentucky and Maryland, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) introduced one in the U.S. Senate in November.

Also introduced in Mississippi is a ban on race- and sex-selective abortions, sponsored by Sen. Chris McDaniel (R-Ellisville). Reproductive rights advocates have pointed out that such bans can lead to racial profiling, and are a problem in search of a solution.

Similar bills focused on sex-selective abortions have been proposed this year in Virginia and West Virginia, and failed to pass last year in Wisconsin; one passed in North Carolina.

Correction: A version of this article noted that jury selection for the lawsuit will begin on March 3. In fact, a trial date has not yet been set. We regret the error.

It also stated that a sex-selective abortion ban failed to pass in North Carolina last year, but it did in fact pass.

A U.S. District Judge temporarily blocked a sweeping and controversial Mississippi “religious freedom” law late Thursday, calling the legislation “arbitrary discrimination against lesbian, gay, transgender, and unmarried persons.”

“The State has put its thumb on the scale to favor some religious beliefs over others,” U.S. District Judge Carlton W. Reeves wrote in a 60-page decision issued hours before HB 1523 was set to go into effect.

Reeves ruled that the bill violated the First and 14th Amendments by allowing individuals, religious organizations, and some government employees with “sincerely held religious beliefs” to deny services to, as Reeves wrote, “lesbian, gay, transgender, and unmarried persons,” potentially gutting certain privileges and legal protections—such as those stemming from the 2015 Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

The bill was authored by Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn (R-Hinds), who had called the high court’s legalization of marriage equality “in direct conflict with God’s design for marriage as set forth in the Bible,” as the Washington Post reported.

“Religious freedom was one of the building blocks of this great nation, and after the nation was torn apart, the guarantee of equal protection under law was used to stitch it back together,” Reeves wrote in his decision.”But HB 1523 does not honor that tradition of religion freedom, nor does it respect the equal dignity of all of Mississippi’s citizens. It must be enjoined.”

The legislation, known as the Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act, was signed into law by Republican Gov. Phil Bryant in April, after clearing the Republican-controlled House and Senate.

The measure enshrined three religiously held tenets: that gender is determined at birth, that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that sex is “properly reserved” for heterosexual marriage. It determined that housing, employment, and adoption decisions could be made based on those religious beliefs.

A swift national and state-level outcry followed the passage of HB 1523, with 80 CEOs, among others, calling for its repeal as “bad for our employees and bad for business,” according to the court documents. The law had been challenged in Barber v. Bryant and Campaign for Southern Equality v. Bryant.

The state has not said whether it will appeal Reeves’ ruling. If the state does not appeal, the temporary order becomes permanent after another hearing.

“I am grateful that the court has blocked this divisive law,” said Rev. Susan Hrostowski, an Episcopal priest and a plaintiff in the Campaign for Southern Equality case. “As a member of the LGBT community and as minister of the Gospel, I am thankful that justice prevailed.”

The injunction Thursday follows a ruling earlier this week by Reeves, a 2010 Obama appointee, which blocked a provision in HB 1523 allowing circuit clerks to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples, as the Washington Post reported. Twenty months prior, Reeves had struck down the state’s statutory and constitutional bans on same-sex marriage.

The Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) released Thursday the state’s abortion statistics for 2014, which show a decrease in the number of abortions in the state compared to the previous year.

The data release comes after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas claimed that DSHS deliberately delayed releasing the information to hide it from the public. It also follows on the heels of the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic decision striking down two provisions of the state’s omnibus anti-abortion law, HB 2.

The total number of abortions in the state decreased from 63,849 in 2013 to 54,902 in 2014—a reduction of 8,947 abortions.

Reproductive rights advocates say the data, which offers a look at the effect of HB 2 in the first full year of its implementation, provides further evidence of the law’s negative impact on access to abortion care.

“We will leave it to statisticians to undertake deeper analyses of this data, but at first glance the numbers demonstrate the devastating effect House Bill 2 had on the women of Texas,” said Trisha Trigilio, staff attorney for ACLU of Texas, in a statement.

The driving force behind the reduction appears to be a substantial decrease in the number of medication abortions: The number decreased from 16,756 in 2013 to 5,044 in 2014.

HB 2 prohibits anyone other than a physician from dispensing abortion medications. At the time that the bill was signed into law, it also required the physician follow then-outdated FDA protocols. The federal regulations have since changed, increasing the time a pregnant person has to receive a medication abortion, from 49 days to 70 days of gestation.

The statistics also show a slight increase in the number of pregnant persons who traveled out of state to obtain abortion care. The number of abortions that took place “out of state” was 754 in 2014, compared to 681 in 2013.

However, data from other states suggest a much larger increase during that time period. As Rewire previously reported, statistics from Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana appear to indicate at least 1,086 patients traveled to those states from Texas to obtain an abortion in 2014.

The DSHS’ 2014 abortion statistics also show that HB 2 had a disproportionate effect on women of color and women in low-income communities. In 2013, there were 24,063 abortions obtained by Latinas, and in 2014 that number fell to 19,654—a decrease of 18.3 percent. Additionally, Black Texans saw a decrease of 7.7 percent, while there was a decrease of 6.7 percent among white Texans.

Trigilio explained in a statement that the statistics reflect the actual intent of proponents of HB 2 and explain why the state agency kept the information “out of the public eye” prior to the Supreme Court decision. (For its part, DSHS said in response to the ACLU’s claims that it had not released the data because it wasn’t final yet.)

“Given the overall drop in abortions—especially in vulnerable communities along the border—as well as the precipitous 70 percent drop in medication abortions, these numbers show that this law never had anything do with women’s health,” said Trigilio.

Heather Busby, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, told the Austin American-Statesman that she was not surprised by the data because she has been “hearing firsthand” from people how difficult it is to obtain abortion care in the state.

The statistics are “further validation that the Supreme Court ruled correctly,” Busby said.

Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said during an interview Thursday on KFYO that the Supreme Court is “corrupt.” Patrick, who was among HB 2’s most strident supporters, argued that the statistics are a positive outcome.

“Our true purpose was to make sure the environments were safe for women, but obviously if you have fewer of abortions that’s something to celebrate,” said Patrick. 

Lawmakers passed the omnibus abortion bill in 2013 under the pretenses of protecting women’s health and safety. Since the law took effect, there have been multiple reports documenting the detrimental effect it has had on patients’ reproductive health care.

The 2014 abortion statistics also reveal that it continues to be safer to have an abortion than to carry a pregnancy to term in Texas: Between 2008 to 2013, the most recent years for which data is available, there were 691 maternal deaths in Texas, compared to just one death due abortion complications from 2008 to 2014.