Wyoming abortion law may be changing after a judge ruled Monday that the state’s current policies limiting access to abortion violate Wyoming’s constitution.
Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens struck down policies that banned abortion except in cases of rape, incest or extreme threats to a woman’s health and prohibited the use of abortion-inducing pills. She argued that the policies violated women’s rights, according to The Associated Press.
Her ruling is a win for abortion rights supporters, and it comes on the heels of key wins in other states on Election Day.
Arizona and Missouri passed ballot initiatives that will expand abortion access, while Colorado, Maryland, Montana and New York passed measures that will make it harder for lawmakers to limit abortion access in the future, as the Deseret News previously reported.
But voters in Florida, South Dakota and Nebraska rejected efforts to loosen abortion restrictions, becoming the first states to defeat such ballot initiatives since the Supreme Court returned control over abortion policy to states in June 2022.
That ruling sparked legal battles across the country, as red states worked to put new abortion bans in place or to enforce older laws passed before the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“Currently, 13 states are enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, and four have bans that kick in at or about six weeks into pregnancy — often before women realize they’re pregnant,” per the AP.
Amid the legal wrangling, the Supreme Court heard two abortion cases last term.
- In the first, the justices protected access to abortion-inducing pills in states that do not explicitly ban abortion and/or abortion pills.
- In the second, the court put parts of Idaho’s abortion law on hold temporarily. That hold will remain in place as a lawsuit over how to balance state abortion restrictions against federal health care rules works its way through the court system.
President-elect Donald Trump made at-times conflicting comments about abortion policy while on the campaign trail, but he often returned to the theme that its good for states, rather than the federal government, to control abortion access.
“While he has at times articulated a strong anti-abortion message, most recently he has not seemed to support a national ban and has said states should set their own abortion policies,” The New York Times reported this week.
The lawmakers defending Wyoming’s abortion laws in court did not respond Monday to the AP’s request for comment. They will have the opportunity to appeal Owens’ ruling.