How an anti-Obamacare amendment kept abortion legal in deep red Wyoming
The Wyoming Supreme Court has voted to keep abortion legal in the most conservative state in America. Their ruling said the laws barring abortion procedures violate the state’s constitution.
Wyoming ruling
The state has only one in-person abortion clinic, located in Casper.
That clinic sued over a law passed in 2023 by the Republican-led legislature that banned abortion at any stage of pregnancy. That law did include exceptions for rape, incest or to save the mother’s life.
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Thirteen states now have a complete ban on abortion following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.
Wyoming’s law change came after the Dobbs decision changed the legality of abortion on the federal level.
The Wellspring Health Access clinic sued, claiming the new laws, “unjustifiably limit a woman’s state constitutional right to make her own health care decisions.”
Several lower courts sided with the clinic before the Supreme Court voted in favor by a measure of 4-1.
“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,” Julie Burkhart, the president of the Wellspring Health Access clinic, told The Associated Press.
That clinic opened in 2023, a year later than planned after someone set the building on fire.
As part of their decisions, the justices on the Wyoming Supreme Court said it’s not their job to “add words” to the state constitution.
“From a doctrinal standpoint, once the court accepted that Article 1, Section 38 protects a fundamental right to make individual health-care decisions and that abortion was included in that, the outcome logically followed,” Sital Kalantry, a law professor at the University of Seattle, told Straight Arrow News.
2012 state constitutional amendment
Lower court judges and the Supreme Court found the anti-abortion laws conflicted with a law passed by voters in 2012.
Following former President Barack Obama’s implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Wyoming voters agreed to amend the state constitution.
The voters passed Amendment A which gave people in Wyoming the power over health care decisions in the state, regardless of federal decisions.
“What the court has done is apply that principle evenhandedly, rather than selectively,” Kalantry said. “The irony lies in the fact that a provision intended to resist Democratic health-care policy has now become one of the strongest state constitutional protections for abortion access in the post-Dobbs era.”
Conservative state upholds abortion
Wyoming is the most conservative state in the country according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index. It’s a state where voters have chosen the Republican candidate for president every election dating back to 1968.
President Donald Trump won the state in 2024 by more than 70%, the highest margin of any state in the country.
While the Supreme Court has upheld the state’s constitution, it does not necessarily mean the end of the abortion debate in the state.
“Wyoming’s constitution can be amended, and the ruling will shift the battleground from courts to voters,” Kalantry said. “The most likely next phase is a proposed constitutional amendment narrowing or qualifying Article 1, Section 38, either by excluding abortion explicitly or by redefining the scope of permissible legislative regulation.”
The justices laid out that scenario in their decision as well.
“Lawmakers could ask Wyoming voters to consider a constitutional amendment that would more clearly address this issue,” the justices wrote.
It’s something the clinic also acknowledged.
“While we celebrate today’s ruling, we know that anti-abortion politicians will continue their push to restrict access to health care in Wyoming with new, harmful proposals in the state legislature,” Burkhart said. “Patients should not have to live in fear that their health care decisions will be suddenly upended at the whim of a judge or lawmaker.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
