On Thursday, a federal judge placed an injunction on Wyoming’s law restricting abortion pills, temporarily halting it from taking effect.
The law, which protects all preborn children from chemical abortions, was signed by Governor Mark Gordon in March and was set to take effect July 1. Per the law, it would be illegal to “prescribe, dispense, distribute, sell or use any drug for the purpose of procuring or performing an abortion.” Anyone found guilty of violating the law, except the pregnant woman, would be charged with a misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in prison and a $9,000 fine.
Judge Melissa Owens of Teton County District Court placed the temporary block on the law in response to a lawsuit filed by four pro-abortion women and two non-profit organizations, noting that the plaintiffs “have clearly shown probable success on the merits and that at least some of the plaintiffs will suffer possible irreparable injury” should the ban be implemented.
Earlier this year, Owens placed an injunction on a separate state law that would protect nearly all preborn children from abortion. In that ruling, she said it was unclear whether or not abortion is healthcare. “The state can not legislate away a constitutional right,” she said in her oral decision. “It’s not clear whether abortion is health care. The court has to then decide that.”
The question of whether or not abortion can be considered health care also played into Thursday’s ruling. Jay Jerde, a special assistant attorney general for Wyoming, argued that there is no medical reason a woman would need the abortion pill, saying, “getting the abortion doesn’t implicate health care because it’s not restoring the woman’s body from pain, physical disease or sickness.”
“Medical services are involved,” Jerde said, “but getting an abortion for reasons other than health care, it can’t be a medical decision.”
Owens disagreed with this assessment. “Essentially the government under this law is making the decision for a woman, rather than the woman making her own health care choice, which is what the overwhelming majority in Wyoming decided that we should get to do,” she said.
