( October 22, 2024, 2:31 PM EDT) -- RICHMOND, Va. — A district court’s ruling that found that parts of North Carolina’s abortion laws are preempted by federal law protected “patient access to essential reproductive health care without trammeling states’ rights,” the District of Columbia and 17 states say in an amicus curiae brief filed in the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in support a doctor who sued the state over its laws regulating mifepristone XE "mifepristone" , one of the two drugs prescribed for medication abortions, and the state’s attorney general, who did not object to the doctor’s arguments....