Abortion will remain legal in Wyoming after the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that two laws barring the procedure, including the country’s first explicit ban on abortion pills, violate the state constitution.
The justices sided with Wellspring Health Access in Casper, the Chelsea’s Fund and four women, including two obstetricians, who sued over abortion bans passed since 2022 after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The ruling came in a 4-1 decision by all justices appointed by Republican governors, according to the AP report.
The court said the laws violated a Wyoming constitutional amendment ensuring competent adults have the right to make their own health care decisions. The amendment was approved by voters in 2012 in response to the federal Affordable Care Act, the AP said.
The justices recognized that the amendment was not written to apply to abortion, but they said it is not their job to “add words” to the Wyoming constitution. The court noted that lawmakers could ask Wyoming voters to consider a constitutional amendment that would more clearly address the issue, the AP report said.
In a statement responding to the decision, Wellspring Health Access President Julie Burkhart said the ruling upholds abortion as “essential health care” that shouldn’t be subject to government interference. Burkhart added: “Our clinic will remain open and ready to provide compassionate reproductive health care, including abortions, and our patients in Wyoming will be able to obtain this care without having to travel out of state.”
The AP reported that the clinic opened in 2023 as the only facility of its kind in the state, almost a year later than planned after an arson attack. It said a woman who admitted breaking in and causing heavy damage by lighting gasoline that she poured over the clinic floors pleaded guilty and has been serving a five-year prison sentence.
Before the state Supreme Court, attorneys for the state argued that abortion cannot violate the Wyoming constitution because it is not health care, the AP said. The Tuesday decision rejected that position under the state constitution’s protections for health care decision-making by competent adults.
Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, said the ruling disappointed him and called for the abortion question to be decided by voters. The AP report said Gordon argued that lawmakers could ask voters to consider a constitutional amendment banning abortion and that such an amendment would require a two-thirds vote to be introduced as a nonbudget matter during the monthlong legislative session focused primarily on the state budget, with the measure going before voters this fall.
Abortion had remained legal in Wyoming since Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens in Jackson blocked the bans while the lawsuit challenging them moved forward. The AP reported that Owens struck down the laws as unconstitutional in 2024.
The Supreme Court’s decision also comes as Wyoming has passed additional abortion-related requirements that were not part of Tuesday’s ruling. The AP reported that last year the state enacted laws requiring abortion clinics to be licensed surgical centers and requiring women to get ultrasounds before medication abortions, and that a judge in a separate lawsuit blocked those laws from taking effect while the case proceeds.
Thirteen states ban abortion completely, the AP reported, after the North Dakota Supreme Court overturned an earlier ruling and upheld that state’s abortion ban in November.