After finding little relief in federal court rulings, abortion foes have taken to some creative legislating in North Carolina and around the country.

Last month, N.C. legislators passed a law requiring women in the state to wait 24 hours and be presented with an ultrasound image of their fetus before choosing an abortion. It was, we thought, an intrusion on a woman's privacy and relationship with her doctors - but it wasn't enough for lawmakers.

Late last week, a federal judge halted enforcement of a budget provision that targets one N.C. agency, Planned Parenthood, by blocking government funding of its family planning and teen pregnancy programs. Legislators, mostly Republican, want to punish Planned Parenthood for also providing abortions, and they've done so with a piece of spiteful, wasteful lawmaking that not only seems to run afoul of the law, but could result in more abortions, not fewer.

Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina asked for a stay to the provision in July on behalf of three N.C. health clinics - in Durham, Chapel Hill and Fayetteville. For years, the clinics had received federal money, distributed through the state, for a teen pregnancy initiative and a Latino family planning project - and state money to pay for contraceptives for low-income women in Durham, Orange and Cumberland counties. Most of that money had been approved for 2011-2012, as well, and none of it was used for abortions.

That nuance didn't matter to N.C. legislators, who enacted in June the one paragraph budget provision - Section 10.19 - that banned the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services from providing state or federal funds to Planned Parenthood. DHHS won't even pay the money that had been approved.

N.C. attorneys argue that the ban does not violate federal regulations, and that Planned Parenthood is welcome to go straight to the Feds for future funding. The latter may be true, but that helps little with the $200,000-plus needed for the programs this year.

Judge James A. Beaty Jr., in his ruling, was rightly skeptical. He noted that the Supreme Court already has declared that states must bow to federal terms and conditions on how federal money is allotted, and that other courts have granted injunctions in similar cases. And by the way, Beaty said, it's probably unconstitutional to deny a provider a grant for specific services because you don't like another service they provide.

It's also, we think, counterproductive. Enforcing Section 10.19 will leave the Planned Parenthood clinics without the money they need for teen pregnancy and family planning programs this year, and there are few, if any, health department resources to pick up the slack. If you want to reduce abortions, cutting off money for contraceptives and education is not a smart way to go about it.

If our state legislators want to get out of the business of receiving and distributing federal money for pregnancy prevention programs - or if they want to eliminate all state programs that do the same - we invite them to explain how North Carolina is better served by risking more unwanted pregnancies.

Otherwise, stop wasting taxpayer dollars defending a regulation that's likely to be struck down. Stop singling out an agency for punishment because you don't like what the law allows it to do. Rescind Section 10.19.