OKLAHOMA CITY – An Oklahoma judge has permanently blocked a state law that requires women seeking abortions to have an ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of the fetus before the procedure.

District Judge Brian Dixon handed down an order Wednesday ruling that the law is unconstitutional and unenforceable. The order says the statute passed in 2010 is an unconstitutional special law because it addresses only patients and physicians concerning abortions and not other medical care.

Enforcement of the law had been blocked since shortly after Nova Health Systems, operator of Reproductive Services of Tulsa, challenged its constitutionality in May 2010. It would have forced a woman seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound, have the image placed in front of her and then hear it described in detail.

It was unclear whether an appeal would be filed.

The author of the ultrasound statute, Rep. Lisa Billy, R-Lindsay, said she was disappointed with the ruling.

"I think women deserve to have all the information necessary before making that decision," Billy said.

Here's how abortion measures are faring in other states:

Arizona
A controversial bill that proposes to ban most abortions performed after 20 weeks of pregnancy moved closer to becoming law in the Republican-controlled state Legislature after clearing the state Senate.

The bill, which would still allow abortions after 20 weeks in the case of medical emergency, was passed by a mostly party-line 20-10 vote in the Senate on Tuesday. Only a small number of abortions are performed in Arizona after 20 weeks.

State Rep. Kimberly Yee, a Republican who sponsored the bill, said she has the votes needed for the late-term abortion bill to pass the House and head to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to sign. No vote has yet been scheduled, and Brewer, a Republican, has not indicated whether she would sign such a measure.

Idaho
The Republican-controlled Legislature this week backed away from a bill requiring women seeking an abortion to get an ultrasound first, capping weeks of contentious Capitol demonstrations and threats against at least one lawmaker.

The legislation passed the Senate, but stalled in the state House after Rep. Tom Loertscher, a Republican from Iona and chairman of the House Affairs Committee, said Tuesday that he wouldn't schedule a committee hearing.

Tennessee
A bill in the Tennessee Legislature that included the online publication of the names of doctors who perform abortions was withdrawn amid a flurry of controversy last week.

Also withdrawn was a requirement to post statistical information about women who undergo the abortions. Critics said it had the potential to inadvertently identify women who've had an abortion. The bill now says that doctors who perform abortions in the state must have hospital privileges in local hospitals.

This story includes reporting from Reuters, The Associated Press and msnbc.com's Sevil Omer.

More content from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Record jackpot as Mega Millions hits $476 million
• Couple charged with murder in Vermont teacher's death
• Passengers tell of pilot's in-flight meltdown
• Couple lives in fear after address tweeted as Zimmerman's

Follow US News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell says he wants amendments to an ultrasound-before-abortion bill.

Updated at 6:35 p.m. ET: RICHMOND, Va. -- State Republican legislators have scrapped a bitterly contested proposal to require women seeking abortions to undergo invasive ultrasound imaging.

Shortly after Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell announced his opposition to the Republican bill, the state House on Wednesday approved a substitute version that still mandates an ultrasound but makes the transvaginal procedure optional.

The House of Delegates voted 65-32 for the watered-down version. Under the substitute, women would still be required to have an ultrasound before an abortion to determine the gestational age, but women subject to a transvaginal procedure would be able to decline, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported.

That likely dooms the measure.

The amended bill now returns to the Senate where its sponsor, Sen. Jill Vogel, said she will strike the legislation.

"There are moments when you are a legislator when you have to stop and you have to have a moment of real conscience,” Vogel said, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “I sort of had that moment this morning considering the outcome and the fate of this bill.”  

Vogel said after hearing from doctors and other constituents that she felt she could not did not “carry the bill in its current form.”

The House action came moments after McDonnell -- facing outrage from women and appeals from GOP moderates -- announced he was opposing the original bill requiring vaginal probes.

McDonnell, a social conservative who says he is "pro-life," appealed for amendments to the bitterly contested legislation. In a transvaginal ultrasound, a wand-like device is inserted and used to send out sound waves.

Until this week, McDonnell and his aides had said the governor would sign the measure if it made it to his desk.

"Over the past days I have discussed the specific language of the proposed legislation with other governors, physicians, attorneys, legislators, advocacy groups, and citizens. It is apparent that several amendments to the proposed legislation are needed to address various medical and legal issues which have arisen," the governor said in a written statement.

Among the amendments McDonnell proposed: to explicitly state that no woman will have to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound involuntarily, and that only an external ultrasound will be required to satisfy the requirements to determine gestational age.

The bill had already won Senate passage. Opponents say it amounts to the state violating a woman's privacy. Supporters say it is medically prudent to determine fetal gestational age and, perhaps, discourage abortions.

Related: Texas begins enforcing strict anti-abortion sonogram law

While the original Virginia bill does require an ultrasound, it does not require the woman to view it, making it less strict than laws in Texas and Oklahoma, according to The New York Times.

More than 1,000 people, most of them women, on Monday locked arms and stood mute outside the Virginia State Capitol to protest the bill and other anti-abortion legislation under consideration by state lawmakers.

Comedian Jon Stewart poked fun at the measure Tuesday night on Comedy Central’s “Daily Show.”

The Associated Press and NBC12.com contributed to this story.

More content from msnbc.com and NBC News

• Santorum hardly alone in belief in Satan
• Latino voters a missed opportunity for Republicans?
• Marine makes last stand in foreclosed home
• Trouble on the ranch: Cattle rustling on the rise in Texas

RICHMOND, Va. – The Virginia House of Delegates delayed voting on a controversial bill that would require women to receive a "transvaginal" ultrasound prior to an abortion.

According to The Virginian-Pilot, some lawmakers discussed making the ultrasound legislation optional rather than mandatory.

A vote on ultrasound bill, SB484, was rescheduled for Wednesday, but there was no word at what time that would take place.

On Monday, hundreds of women locked arms and stood mute outside the Virginia State Capitol to protest the wave of anti-abortion legislation coursing through the General Assembly.  

The silent protest was over bills that would require "transvaginal" ultrasounds of women seeking abortions, define embryos as humans and criminalize their destruction, and cut state aid to poor women seeking abortions.

Also on Tuesday, the Senate voted 22-18 to pass a bill allowing private adoption agencies to deny placements that conflict with their religious or moral beliefs, including opposition to homosexuality. The House had already passed the bill, which only needs Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell's signature to take effect July 1.

North Dakota is the only other state with such a law.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More content from msnbc.com and NBC News

• Race-based admissions? Supreme Court to hear case
• Making a Difference: Kids fishing for (and catching) success
• Rev. Graham: Obama seen as 'son of Islam'
• Lawmaker: 'Radical' Girl Scouts out to destroy American values
• Where do problem teachers go? LA's 'rubber room'

In Texas, women must get a sonogram at least 24 hours before they can get an abortion.

Fewer abortions? Better-informed patients? Insulted women? The impact of a controversial new Texas law that requires women to have a sonogram – and listen to a description of the fetus as well as its heartbeat – at least 24 hours before they can get an abortion is far from clear.

Texas state health officials began enforcing the sonogram provision – which critics say is the most extreme sonogram-related law in the nation – on Tuesday.

Reaction has been decidedly mixed.

Msnbc.com was unable to contact women who have undergone the sonogram this week, but Texas abortion providers say many of their patients felt insulted.

“The emotions range from confusion to anger to being quite emotionally upset by it. Having to hear the position described of fetal development is not something they are wanting to endure,”  said Rochelle Tafolla, spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, which has three centers that provide abortions.

“We haven’t heard of any women who, after going through these steps, are saying, ‘No, I’m changing my mind.’”

The law requires doctors who perform abortions to conduct a sonogram 24 hours before the procedure, display the images of the fetus and make the heartbeat audible. The woman can decline to view the images and listen to the heartbeat. The doctor must also verbally describe the sonogram result – even if the woman doesn’t want to hear it.

Read details of Texas sonogram law

Although the sonogram law technically went into effect last fall, the state didn’t begin enforcing its requirements until Tuesday, when the Texas Department of State Health Services posted guidelines for abortion providers. Facilities that fail to comply face penalties of up to $1,000 per violation per day.

Department spokeswoman Carrie Williams said Wednesday that the state agency has received “a couple of technical questions” about the law’s requirements since its implementation but hasn’t gotten any significant feedback yet from abortion providers or pregnant women.

Effect uncertain at this point
It’s too soon to track the impact of the sonogram law on the number of abortions performed in Texas, which has 39 licensed abortion providers, Williams added.

About 75,000 abortions were performed in Texas in 2010, the latest year for which statistics are available, according to State Health Services.

Elizabeth Graham, director of Texas Right to Life, says anecdotal reports she’s received “from our friends who counsel outside of abortion clinics tell us 70 to 80 percent of women will choose life after seeing a sonogram.”

As for the long-term impact, ”If the clinics are following the law according to its legislative intent, then we think the law could reduce the number of abortions in Texas by at least 30 percent,” she said.

Tafolla said Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast clinics have not seen a drop-off in the number of abortions performed since the sonogram law went into effect Oct. 1.

About 15 percent to 17 percent of pregnant women who undergo the ultrasound at Planned Parenthood don’t come back for the abortion, Tafolla says, but that could be for a number of reasons.

“What we knew by fact is statistically the majority of women who are having abortion are already mothers.  They fully understand what a pregnancy is, so they’re making a very informed decision,” she says.

'Most extreme ultrasound-related law'
Julie Rikelman, an attorney with the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, which sued unsuccessfully to block the Texas legislation, calls it “the most extreme ultrasound-related law that is being enforced in the United States.”

(Oklahoma and North Carolina have similar laws, but their enforcement has been held up because sonogram requirements were blocked by the courts, Rikelman says.)

“I think the experience of providers has been that women just find it offensive because the presumption of the law is somehow women don’t know what they’re doing and need to be forced to consider information even if it’s not relevant to them. It’s very demeaning to them,” she says.

But Lori DeVillez, executive director of the Austin Pregnancy Resource Center, which provides support services and abortion alternatives to pregnant women, says the sonogram law is “a healthy law.”

Like any other major medical procedure, she says, patients deserve to know beforehand what an abortion entails before they decide whether to undergo it.

Devillez doesn’t know whether the law will eventually lower the number of abortions performed in Texas. But she hopes it does. “I hope giving women the opportunity to get the information they need will help them understand decisions they are making for themselves and their babies,” she says.

Logistical headache for clinics
Perhaps one of the most significant practical impacts of the Texas law to date is logistics, says Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder of Whole Woman’s Health clinics in Texas. The law’s requirements have caused scheduling headaches because doctors who perform abortions now must also perform a sonogram – on a separate day. They can’t delegate that latter task to, say, an ultrasound technician.

And they can’t have another doctor do the abortion if they're busy.

As for patients, many are already mothers and must make separate doctor's visits, often taking an additional day or two off work, Hagstrom Miller said.

“We’ve had a lot of frustration, a lot of, ‘Why do I have to do this? I know what I want to do,’” she said.

The five Whole Woman’s Health clinics began complying with the sonogram law in mid-January. Out of the several hundred women who were offered a chance to listen to the fetal heartbeat, only two opted to do so, Hagstrom Miller says.

Likewise, most women are declining to see their sonogram image, she said.

“I am not aware of anyone saying, ‘Oh my goodness, I didn’t know what the ultrasound looked like and I’m going to change my pregnancy,'” Hagstrom Miller added.

More content from msnbc.com and NBC News

• Toilet paper taking out tiger, elephant habitat, WWF says
• Getting the affluent to pay for payroll tax cut
• Umm, are those gang signs in Chicago's new sticker?
• Frantic 911 calls released in Powell murder-suicide
• That'll be $2,000 extra for your aisle seat, Mr. Nader