New York ? A federal judge declared the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act unconstitutional Thursday in the second such ruling in three months — even though he called the procedure “gruesome, brutal, barbaric and uncivilized.”

U.S. District Judge Richard C. Casey — one of three federal judges across the country to hear simultaneous challenges to the law earlier this year — faulted the ban for not containing an exception to protect a woman’s health, something the Supreme Court has made clear is required in laws prohibiting particular types of abortion.

The law, signed last November, banned a procedure known to doctors as intact dilation and extraction and called partial-birth abortion by abortion foes. The fetus is partially removed from the womb, and the skull is punctured or crushed.

Louise Melling, director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, said her group was thrilled by the ruling.

“We can only hope as we have decision after decision after decision striking these bans, saying they endanger women’s health, that the legislatures will finally stop,” she said.

On June 1, U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton in San Francisco also found the law unconstitutional, saying it violates a woman’s right to choose an abortion. A judge in Lincoln, Neb., has yet to rule. The three judges suspended the ban while they held the trials.

The three verdicts are almost certain to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

“We are in the process of the appeal of these issues now, which tells you exactly what we’re doing and where we’re going,” Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said Thursday.

The ban, which President Clinton twice vetoed, was seen by abortion rights activists as a fundamental departure from the Supreme Court’s 1973 precedent in Roe v. Wade. But the Bush administration has argued that the procedure was cruel and unnecessary and caused pain to the fetus.

At trials earlier this year, doctors testified that of 1.3 million abortions performed annually, the law would affect about 130,000, almost all in the second trimester. Some observers suggest the number would be much lower: 2,200 to 5,000.

In his ruling, Casey said that there was evidence that the procedure could have safety advantages for women. He said the Supreme Court had made it clear that “this gruesome procedure may be outlawed only if there exists a medical consensus that there is no circumstance in which any women could potentially benefit from it.”