WASHINGTON >> The Supreme Court is refusing to allow Arizona to enforce stringent restrictions on drug-induced abortions while a challenge to those rules plays out in lower courts.

The justices on Monday left in place a lower court ruling that blocked regulations that control where and how women can take medications that cause abortions. The rules also would prohibit use of the drugs after the seventh week of pregnancy instead of the ninth.

Stephanie Grisham, spokeswoman for Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne, said it would have been extremely rare for the high court to grant the state’s request to enforce the restrictions.

"We’re disappointed, of course, but at this point there is nothing more that we can do," Grisham said. 

Planned Parenthood is among the abortion providers challenging the rules in federal court.

"The court did the right thing today, but this dangerous and misguided law should never have passed in the first place," Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement.