Wyoming Will Fight for Abortion Ban in Court, Arguing Abortion is Not Health Care

A week after Judge Thomas Campbell heard a challenge to two Wyoming laws passed in 2024, one requiring abortion clinics to be licensed as ambulatory surgical centers and a second requiring ultrasounds and a 48-hour waiting period, the Wyoming Supreme Court will heard oral arguments whether Judge Melissa Owens properly struck down the “Life is a Human Right Act.”

At issue in Johnson v. Wyoming is the state’s highly protective abortion law protects unborn babies except when the woman’s life is at risk or in instances of rape and incest. A second law made Wyoming the first state after Dobbs toppled Roe to explicitly prohibit the use of medical [chemical] abortion.

In November 2024, Judge Owens ruled that the abortion laws “will undermine the integrity of the medical profession by hamstringing the ability of physicians to provide evidence-based medicine to their patients,” according to Mead Gruver of the Associated Press.

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Owens also ruled “that the abortion laws impede the fundamental right of women to make health care decisions for an entire class of people — those who are pregnant — in violation of the constitutional amendment,” passed in 2012.

However, Gruver added, “Attorneys for the state argued that health care, under the amendment, didn’t include abortion.”

“Owens’ decision was based on the argument that the laws impeded the fundamental right laid out in the Wyoming Constitution by making health care decisions for an entire class of people: pregnant women,” Jasmine Hall reported. “Now, Supreme Court justices will decide whether her interpretation of state law and the Wyoming Constitution stands.”

Meanwhile, without explanation, the challenge to the two laws passed in 2024 was assigned to Judge Thomas Campbell who had retired from the bench last year.

“Lawyers for the abortion providers say those laws — like the bans passed in 2023 — violate Wyomingites’ constitutional right to make their own health care decisions,” the Wyoming Tribune Eagle’s Joshua Wolfson reported.

Judge Campbell heard oral arguments but unlike Judge Owens, did not issue a ruling from the bench. “Courts do not rule from the bench in these circumstances,” Campbell said. “A written opinion on the injunction will be entered with justification to some degree one way or the other.”

Attorneys representing Wellspring Health Access President Julie Burkhart “and other abortion advocates maintain the new laws are unconstitutional and nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt at halting abortion altogether after a separate judge blocked Wyoming’s two existing abortion bans in November,” Wolfson reported. “They maintain the new laws unfairly target Wellspring and won’t make women seeking abortions any safer.”

But, as Wolfson went on to explain,

On Tuesday, Senior Assistant Attorney General John Woykovsky took aim at those arguments. The state maintains abortion does not qualify as health care in the context of the constitutional amendment. And regardless, that amendment still allows the Wyoming Legislature to enact restrictions related to health care, he said.

“There is no fundamental right to make health care decisions that are unrestricted,” he said.  

Beyond that, Woykovsky noted that Wellspring, while saying the new rules are too onerous, hasn’t provided details about how much it would cost to upgrade the facility to comply with them.

“All we know is Wellspring has stated they are not willing to try,” he said.

The Wellspring Health Access clinic, located in Casper, stopped providing abortions in late February as a result of the laws. They are referring women to out-of-state providers.

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. He frequently writes Today’s News and Views — an online opinion column on pro-life issues.

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