Wyoming Anti-Abortion Law Done In By GOP's Own Anti-Obamacare Law
Oh, the not-technically-irony!
Wyoming Republicans have been hoisted on their own petard — which, incidentally, I recently discovered was a small bomb used to blow open doors and gates and not some kind of pulley system as I had always imagined.
An amendment to the state constitution meant to combat the horrors of the Affordable Care Act that never materialized was used by a judge this week to invalidate their state’s terrible abortion ban — the horrors of which have, in fact, already materialized in states with similar bans.
This will be the third time that Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens has struck down the laws. Let’s hope this time is the charm!
The plaintiffs in the case included Danielle Johnson, an ER nurse specializing in sexual assault; Kathleen Dow, a Jewish woman who believes the bans are a violation of her faith; Giovannina Anthony, an ob-gyn at the Women’s Health Center and Family Care Clinic in Jackson; Rene Hinkle, an ob-gyn who specializes in high-risk pregnancies; Chelsea’s Fund, which provides financial assistance to those in need of abortion; and Circle of Hope/Wellspring Health Access, which provides abortion medication through telehealth services.
Their lawyers argued that the state’s ban on abortion (with rape and incest exception) and its specific ban on abortion pills violate a constitutional amendment that Wyoming voters approved in 2012, explicitly stating that “[E]very competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions.”
Attorneys representing the state argued that when they said “health care” they didn’t mean “abortion,” but since abortions are health care whether they like it or not, and there was no special “except for health care decisions we don’t like” addendum, they lost.
The laws “impede the fundamental right to make health care decisions for an entire class of people, pregnant women” and “will undermine the integrity of the medical profession by hamstringing the ability of physicians to provide evidence-based medicine to their patients,” Owens wrote in her ruling.
“The abortion statutes suspend a woman’s right to make her own health care decisions during the entire term of a pregnancy and are not reasonable or necessary to protect the health and general welfare of the people,” she added.
This is obviously excellent news for those in Wyoming who prefer to make their own decisions about their reproductive lives, as well as those who may want children but do not want to run the risk of dying because something went wrong and a doctor can’t help them until they are near death.
Fun fact — Wyoming is known as “The Equality State” due to the fact that it was the first state to allow women to vote and hold office, all the way back in 1869, while it was still a territory and not an official state. They were also the first state to have a female governor, to appoint a woman to public office, to have female jurors, a female bailiff, and an entire town governed only by women. The United States initially tried to make revoking women’s right to vote a condition of joining the union, but the Legislature turned it down, saying, “We will remain out of the Union one hundred years rather than come in without the women.”
Sadly, this legacy has been somewhat tarnished in recent years, what with the abortion bans and the fact that a 2022 analysis ranked the state 45th in terms of gender equality. Not great! Perhaps this ruling will be the first step to getting the state back on track.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
The adamant refusal of these self-righteous shit-disturbers to recognize abortion as HEALTHCARE ought to be a disqualifing factor to holding office. ANY denials of established, tangible and observed science should have these oppressive abominations out on their ignorant ass.
Wyoming appears to have been a pretty nice place to live... 160 years ago.