Wyoming’s Abortion Bans Are Unconstitutional, Judge Rules

The ruling found that two state laws — one barring use of abortion pills, and one banning all forms of abortion — violated the state Constitution’s “fundamental right to make health care decisions.”

A Wyoming judge ruled on Monday that two state abortion bans — including the first state law specifically banning the use of pills for abortion — violated the Wyoming Constitution and could not be enforced.

Judge Melissa Owens of Teton County District Court wrote in her ruling that both the ban on medication abortion and a broader ban against all methods of abortion “impede the fundamental right to make health care decisions for an entire class of people, pregnant women.”

She added, “The abortion statutes suspend a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions during the entire term of a pregnancy and are not reasonable or necessary to protect the health and general welfare of the people.”

Enforcement of the two abortion bans, passed last year, had been temporarily halted by Judge Owens while the court case proceeded. Her decision on Monday blocks the laws permanently, although the state is expected to appeal. Efforts to reach the state attorney general’s office and the governor’s office were unsuccessful on Monday night.

The suit to block the bans was filed by a group of plaintiffs that included two abortion providers in Wyoming; an obstetrician-gynecologist who often treats high-risk pregnancies; an emergency-room nurse; a fund that gives financing to abortion patients; and a woman who said her Jewish faith required access to abortion if a pregnant woman’s physical or mental health or life was in danger.

An amendment to the Wyoming Constitution, approved by an overwhelming majority of the state’s voters in 2012, guarantees adults the right to make their own health care decisions.

In court last year, the state, represented by Jay Jerde, a special assistant attorney general for Wyoming, argued that even though doctors and other health providers must be involved in abortions, there were many instances in which abortion was not “health care” because “it’s not restoring the woman’s body from pain, physical disease or sickness.”

Mr. Jerde also argued that the constitutional amendment allowing people to make decisions about their own health care did not apply to abortion because terminating a pregnancy affected not just the woman making the decision, but the fetus as well.

Judge Owens rejected both of those arguments. She wrote: “The uncontested facts establish that the abortion statutes fail to accomplish any of the asserted interests by the state. The state did not present any evidence refuting or challenging the extensive medical testimony presented by the plaintiffs.”

Dr. Giovannina Anthony, an obstetrician-gynecologist and abortion provider who was one of the plaintiffs in the case, said on Monday night that she was “grateful and relieved that the judge agreed that abortion is health care and that abortion bans violate the rights of pregnant women.”

Dr. Anthony said she expected the state to appeal. “This is not the end of the fight in Wyoming, but for now we can continue to provide evidence-based care without fear of a prison sentence.”