The Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday that doctors can keep using a telemedicine system to dispense abortion pills because it would pose an "undue burden" on a woman's right to abortion.

More than 7,200 Iowa women have used the Planned Parenthood of the Heartland system to obtain abortion-inducing pills since 2008. The system, the first of its kind in the nation, allows Planned Parenthood doctors in Des Moines or Iowa City to interact via video with patients in outlying clinics, then dispense the pills to the women.

State regulators, appointed by Iowa's governor who opposes abortion, ruled in 2013 that the system should effectively be banned because of purported safety concerns. The ban was put on hold while Planned Parenthood appealed in court. A district judge sided with the regulators in 2014, but the Supreme Court disagreed Friday.

The justices decided 6-0 that the Iowa Board of Medicine's rule violated women's rights under the state and federal constitutions. The court noted that telemedicine is being used to provide many other types of health care. But the medical board only focused on telemedicine's use for abortion when it imposed a requirement that doctors personally perform physical exams on patients, the justices wrote. "It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the board's medical concerns about telemedicine are selectively limited to abortion."

Terminally ill children in unbearable suffering should be given the right to die, the Dutch Paediatricians Association said on Friday, urging the suppression of the current 12-year age limit.

"We feel that an arbitrary age limit such as 12 should be changed and that each child's ability to ask to die should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis," said Eduard Verhagen, paediatrics professor at Groningen University who is on the association's ethics commission.

Children in the Netherlands aged 12 or over can request euthanasia if they are terminally ill, suffering unbearably, able to express their will and have parental approval.