Judge blocks Wyoming’s 1st-in-the-nation abortion pill ban while court decides lawsuit

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Abortion pills will remain legal in Wyoming for now, after a judge ruled Thursday that the state’s first-in-the-nation law to ban them won’t take effect July 1 as planned while a lawsuit proceeds.

Attorneys for Wyoming failed to show that the ban wouldn’t harm the plaintiffs before their lawsuit is resolved, Teton County Judge Melissa Owens ruled after hearing arguments from both sides. Meanwhile, those plaintiffs “have clearly showed probable success on the merits,” Owens said.

While other states have instituted de facto bans on the medication by broadly prohibiting abortion, only Wyoming has specifically banned abortion pills. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that access to one of the two pills, mifepristone, may continue while litigants seek to overturn the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of it.

Wyoming’s pill ban is being challenged by four women, including two obstetricians, and two nonprofit organizations. One of the groups, Wellspring Health Access, opened as the state’s first full-service abortion clinic in years in April following an arson attack in 2022.

They’re are also suing to stop a near-total ban on abortion enacted in Wyoming in March. Owens has suspended that law, too, and combined the two lawsuits.

Because abortion remains legal in Wyoming, banning abortion pills would require women to get more invasive surgical abortions instead, Marci Bramlet, an attorney for the ban opponents told Owens in Thursday’s hearing.

“It effectively tells people you must have open-heart surgery when a stent would do,” Bramlet said.

A state constitutional amendment enacted in 2012 also came into play in court arguments. The amendment passed in response to the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama’s health care law, says Wyoming residents have the right to make their own health care decisions.

Wyoming’s new abortion laws allow exceptions to save life and for cases of rape or incest that are reported to police. But abortion for other reasons isn’t health care under the amendment, Jay Jerde, an attorney for the state, argued.

“It’s not restoring a woman’s body from pain, injury or physical sickness,” Jerde said. “Medical services are involved, but getting an abortion for reasons other than health care, it can’t be a medical decision.”