A new lawsuit stopped the abortion ban in Wyoming for now.
At least for now, abortion will be allowed again in Wyoming after a court temporarily suspended a prohibition that went into force a few days ago.
Judge Melissa Owens of the Teton County District Court has decided to stop the prohibition. This is because a legislation that went into force on Sunday is being challenged in her court. Even though Owens had banned a prior prohibition shortly after it went into force last summer, the Republican-controlled Legislature passed the measure nevertheless.
Owens placed the new ban on hold after proponents of abortion rights testified at a hearing on Wednesday that it hurts pregnant women and their physicians and goes against the state constitution. Owens put the ban on hold for at least two weeks.
The restriction makes it illegal to have an abortion at any time during a woman’s pregnancy, save in circumstances of suspected rape or incest, or to save a woman’s life.
An amendment to the Wyoming Constitution stipulates that individuals have the right to make their own health care decisions, but Republicans passed a restriction that says abortion is not health care.
But Owens added that politicians, not the courts, should decide if that’s true.
“A fundamental right can’t be taken away by a law made by the government. It isn’t obvious if abortion is a form of health care. The court then has to decide that,” Owens said at the end of an hour-long session when he made his judgment.
The judge did not say anything about Wyoming’s first-in-the-nation restriction on abortion drugs, which is also being challenged in her court. The Republican Gov. Mark Gordon signed that measure on Friday, but it won’t go into effect until July 1.
Two non-profits, two physicians, and two other women have filed a lawsuit to stop Wyoming from making its abortion ban stricter.
A lawyer for abortion rights, John Robinson, contended that the new prohibition on abortion pills shows that abortion is not health care, even if the new ban on abortion as a whole implies that abortion is not health care. He said that the pill prohibition makes it possible to “treat” miscarriages and preserve a woman’s life.
“How can abortion be considered health care in one law that bans it but not in the other?” Robinson stated. “That’s treatment from a doctor.”
Robinson pointed out that even Gordon was worried that the entire abortion ban didn’t answer the constitutional question, which is why he didn’t sign it.
But Special Assistant Attorney General Jay Jerde told the judge that the Legislature can “interpret the constitution, and the court should give that interpretation a lot of weight.” He said it would be “almost ridiculous” to say, for example, that the amendment would let people in Wyoming use medicinal marijuana, which is outlawed there.
Owens lifted a similar restriction on abortion in Wyoming in July, after the U.S. Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. This meant that there was no longer a national right to abortion, and it was up to each state to determine what to do. After Owens’s first order, lawmakers tried to address her concerns by writing a new statute.
Wyoming has just one place where you may have an abortion. It’s a women’s health clinic in Jackson that only does medication abortions, but they had to halt this week because of the state’s new law.
Wellspring Health Access, a non-profit, was preparing to build the first full-service abortion clinic in the state in Casper. This facility would offer both surgical and drug abortions. It didn’t open until June 2022 because of a fire that was started on purpose in May 2022. On Wednesday, investigators said they had detained a lady in the case. Lorna Roxanne Green, who is 22 years old and from Casper, was supposed to go to federal court on Thursday in Cheyenne.
The head of the organization, Julie Burkhart, was happy with the court’s decision on Wednesday.
Burkhart said in a statement, “No matter how anti-choice legislators try to spin it, abortion is health care, and people in Wyoming have a constitutional right to that care.”
The clinic was supposed to open last summer, but someone set it on fire. Organizers now aim to open it next month.
Gordon said in a statement that he was sad about the decision, but he was looking forward to the next time the state could go to court to defend the abortion ban.