Abortion stays legal in Wyoming as its top court strikes down laws, including first US pill ban

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — Abortion will remain legal in Wyoming after the state Supreme Court struck down laws that include the country’s first explicit ban on abortion pills, ruling Tuesday that they violate the state constitution.

The justices sided with the state’s only abortion clinic and others who had sued over the bans passed since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.

Wellspring Health Access in Casper, the abortion access advocacy group Chelsea’s Fund and four women, including two obstetricians, argued that the laws violated a state constitutional amendment ensuring that competent adults have the right to make their own health care decisions.

Attorneys for the state, however, argued that abortion can’t violate the Wyoming constitution because it is not health care.

Voters approved the constitutional amendment in 2012 in response to the federal Affordable Care Act. The justices recognized that the amendment wasn’t written to apply to abortion but said it’s not their job to “add words” to the state constitution.

“But lawmakers could ask Wyoming voters to consider a constitutional amendment that would more clearly address this issue,” the justices wrote in summarizing their 4-1 ruling.

Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, said in a statement that he was disappointed by the ruling and called on state lawmakers meeting this winter to pass a proposed constitutional amendment banning abortion that would go before voters this fall.

“This ruling may settle, for now, a legal question, but it does not settle the moral one, nor does it reflect where many Wyoming citizens stand, including myself. It is time for this issue to go before the people for a vote,” Gordon said.

Such an amendment would require a two-thirds vote to be introduced for consideration during the monthlong legislative session devoted primarily to the state budget. But it would have wide support in the Republican-dominated statehouse.

One of the laws overturned Tuesday sought to ban abortion except to protect a pregnant woman’s life or in cases involving rape or incest. The other law would have made Wyoming the only state to explicitly ban abortion pills, though other states have instituted de facto bans on abortion medication by broadly prohibiting abortion.

Abortion has remained legal in this conservative state since Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens in Jackson blocked the bans while the lawsuit challenging them went ahead. Owens struck down the laws as unconstitutional in 2024.

Wellspring Health Access and attorneys on both sides of the case didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment.

Last year, Wyoming passed additional laws requiring abortion clinics to be licensed surgical centers and women to get ultrasounds before having medication abortions. The Supreme Court ruling means those limitations could take effect, although a judge in a separate lawsuit has blocked them from taking effect while the case proceeds.