Three-judge panel ruled on Thursday that Tennessee doctors providing emergency abortions in order to protect the mother’s life cannot be revoked of their medical licenses or face any other disciplinary action while a suit challenging the state’s abortion ban continues.

The ruling also listed specific conditions related to pregnancy that would qualify now as “medical need exceptions” in the ban. This currently does not include any exceptions for fetal abnormalities or victims of rape and incest.

The ruling noted that “This lack is evident by the confusion and lack consensus in the Tennessee medical community regarding the circumstances that require necessary health-saving and life-saving care for abortion.” The evidence presented shows how complex, serious and difficult these issues are. It also raises questions about whether the medical necessity exemption is narrow enough to serve an important state interest.

The judges determined the following medical conditions are now exempt from the abortion laws in the state: premature rupture of amniotic sac surrounding the fetus, inevitable abortions, fatal fetal diagnosis that results in severe preeclampsia and mirror syndrome with fetal Hydrops or fatal fetal diagnosis that leads to infection leading to uterine rupture.

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The original abortion law only stated that doctors using their “reasonable judgment” to “prevent death or serious risk of irreversible impairment to a major body function or to prevent the death of the woman pregnant or to prevent the serious risk of substantial harm to the woman’s health or life.”

The ruling is a victory for reproductive rights activists who have argued the Volunteer State’s ban on abortion, which is in effect since 2022 is too vague, and unfairly places doctors at high risk of breaking the statute.

The judges said they did not have jurisdiction because they were a chancery court. They also stated that they could not block the criminal statute within the ban, where violators are subject to felony charges and a maximum 15-year prison sentence.

The ruling on Thursday means that, while doctors won’t face disciplinary action from the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners and the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office, they still could risk criminal charges.

A group of doctors and women filed the lawsuit last year, asking judges to clarify under what circumstances patients could legally obtain an abortion. They asked the court to include fatal diagnosis.

The Center for Reproductive Rights (which represents women and doctors) argues that the GOP-dominated General Assembly drafted Tennessee’s ban on abortion so broadly and vaguely that doctors are forced to work in fear of their decisions to perform abortions being second-guessed and undermined, and possibly used to bring charges against them that could end their careers.

Rebecca Milner is one of the plaintiffs. She learned that she was pregnant in February 2023, after years of failed fertility treatments.

Milner, according to court documents was informed at her 20-week appointment by the doctor that there was not enough amniotic liquid around her baby. Later, a specialist said that Milner’s water was likely broken several weeks earlier and that there could be nothing done to save her baby.

Her doctor told her that Tennessee’s ban on abortion prohibited abortion services for her. Milner had to travel to Virginia to have an abortion, and then return to Tennessee with high fever. Her doctors told her she was infected and that delaying an abortion had allowed it to worsen.

The state’s lawyer countered by saying that doctors do not want their medical decisions to be questioned by government officials and tried to dismiss the lawsuit by arguing that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue. The judges denied this request in large part, but they did agree to dismiss one woman who filed the lawsuit due to a surgery she had undergone that prevented her from getting pregnant again.

In a press release, Jonathan Skrmetti, Attorney General of Tennessee said that the State has always maintained that Tennessee’s Human Life Protection Act permits pregnant women to get all the care they need to deal with serious health risks. The court’s injunction mirrors this understanding. “We all agree that doctors must save lives and protect patients.”

The Tennessee legal challenge is one of a few lawsuits filed in Republican-dominated states across the U.S. after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the constitutional right to an abortion was overturned in 2022.