Wyoming voters already basically decided they are pro-choice, the state Supreme Court has ruled in a decision that voids subsequent pro-life laws implemented when Roe v. Wade was overturned.
The court struck the Life is a Human Right Act, which made most abortions a criminal act. They are a “fundamental right” and a health care decision protected in the state Constitution, plaintiffs who challenged the new law said.
The court, in a 4-1 ruling, agreed.
“Although we recognize the State’s interest in protecting the life that an abortion would end, we conclude the State did not meet its burden of justifying the abortion statutes’ restrictions on a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions…” Justice Lynne Boomgaarden wrote for the majority.
In 2012, the results of a passed ballot question were codified in the state Constitution. It said every competent adult “shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions,” though it added the legislature could determine “reasonable and necessary restrictions… to protect the health and general welfare.”
That 2012 question had been proposed in response to the Affordable Care Act and wasn’t apparently intended to specifically address abortions. Ten years later, the U.S. Supreme Court struck Roe v. Wade, with its Dobbs decision sending the issue of abortion to individual states.
Wyoming lawmakers responded with the anti-abortion laws, citing a desire to protect the rights of prenatal life, women and the medical profession. Those justifications were a “thinly veiled pretense for the legislature’s attempt to impose a sectarian religious viewpoint,” plaintiffs told the Wyoming Supreme Court.
They were held against the 2012 law – Article 1, Section 38. Former state Attorney General Bridget Hill and Gov. Mark Gordon defended the laws in a February brief, citing a history of restrictions on elective abortions that were eased while Roe was in effect but triggered when it was overturned.
The new laws allowed abortions when there was a substantial risk of death that childbirth would cause the mother or if the pregnancy was the result of incest or sexual assault. Also allowed were instances when the child had a lethal fetal anomaly.
After finding abortion is a “health care decision,” the court found legislators had not sufficiently justified the pro-life laws – even against arguments the mother would be making health care decisions for the child.
Though justices took different routes on what standards the new laws must be analyzed under, the ultimate agreement was that they were not tailored to show a compelling interest in preserving prenatal life.
“A woman has a fundamental right to make her own health care decisions, including the decision to have an abortion,” Boomgaarden wrote.
“The State did not meet its burden of demonstrating the Abortion Laws further the compelling interest of protecting unborn life without unduly infringing upon the woman’s fundamental right to make her own health care decisions.”
Justice Kari Jo Gray dissented, focusing on the provision in the 2012 law that allows lawmakers to make “reasonable and necessary restrictions” on health care decisions.
“The legislature’s judgment to preserve prenatal life from conception, while carving out exceptions it deemed reasonable and necessary (including for lethal fetal anomalies, maternal life/health, and incest/sexual assault), falls well within the discretion the people expressly granted it,” Gray wrote.
“The legislature has implemented statutes that pass constitutional muster by establishing a reasonable and necessary method to achieve the preservation of prenatal life.”
