The Wyoming Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down the state’s near-total abortion ban and a first-of-its-kind prohibition on abortion pills, saying that the laws violated the state constitution.
In 2023, the year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Wyoming passed an abortion ban that included narrow exceptions for incest, sexual assault and cases where the mother’s health is at risk. Later that year, it became the first state in the country to explicitly outlaw abortion pills, setting fines and prison time for anyone found prescribing the drugs for an abortion.
But abortion remained legal in the red state because the bans were blocked in court as legal challenges played out. In the case decided Tuesday, Wyoming’s Supreme Court weighed whether the two 2023 laws violated a woman’s right to make her own health care choices as guaranteed in the state constitution.
The state argued that the laws did not violate that right because abortion is not health care. Even if it were, the state argued, the procedure could not be considered a woman’s own decision because it ended the life of the fetus.
The Wyoming Supreme Court disagreed.
“Although a woman’s decision to have an abortion ends the fetal life, the decision is, nevertheless, one she makes concerning her own health care,” Wyoming Chief Justice Lynne Boomgaarden wrote in the court’s ruling.
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon (R), who signed both of the contested abortion laws, derided the court’s decision. He pressed Wyoming’s Republican-led legislature to pass a constitutional amendment on abortion as soon as possible.
If the legislature passed such an amendment, it would then go before voters during the 2026 election.
“This ruling is profoundly unfortunate and sadly only serves to prolong the ultimate and proper resolution of this issue,” Gordon said in a statement. “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.”
The state’s attorney who argued before the Wyoming Supreme Court did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The case decided Tuesday was brought by Wyoming’s lone abortion clinic, a nonprofit in the state that helps fund abortion services and a group of women who live there.
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