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 including the country’s first explicit ban on pill abortions, 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, the year that 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. They told the court 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.

One law 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 November.