Wyoming Justices Declare Near-Total Abortion Ban Invalid (1)

Abortion up to when a fetus can live outside the womb remains legal in Wyoming after the state’s top justices Tuesday struck down provisions restricting a woman’s right to make her own health-care decisions, as guaranteed by the state constitution.

The Wyoming Supreme Court held the state’s Life Is a Human Right Act—which allows doctors to perform only life-saving abortions, end pregnancies resulting from incest or rape, and terminate ectopic pregnancies and those where the fetus has been diagnosed with a lethal anomaly—unconstitutional. It also invalidated a ban on pill-induced abortions involving any type of medication.

This is one of several cases in which reproductive rights advocates argued that a state constitution protected abortion rights that were lost on the federal level when the US Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. It also comes at a time when anti-abortion states are increasingly attacking medication abortions, which have become a popular way to terminate pregnancies in states that ban the procedure.

The clinics, doctors, and patients challenging the Wyoming law rested their arguments on a 2012 amendment to the Wyoming Constitution. The amendment was implemented following the passage of the Affordable Care Act, for fear it would limit how Wyoming’s citizens could get health care, but the plaintiffs said it and other provisions like it created new substantive rights.

The decision to terminate a pregnancy is a health-care decision within the meaning of the amendment and belongs to the pregnant person, the court said, rejecting the state’s argument that it’s a decision to end a separate life. Many factors influence such a decision—including a person’s physical and mental health, finances, career plans, personal relationships with a partner or other children, and religions beliefs, Chief Justice Lynne J. Boomgaarden wrote for the majority.

The amendment, moreover, confers a fundamental right on every competent adult to make one’s own health-care decisions, she said. Wyoming’s explicit protection of this right appears to be unique, but other states have recognized it more generally, she said.

Wyoming therefore had to show it had a compelling interest for restricting this right that couldn’t be served in a less restrictive way, Boomgaarden said. It failed to do so. Rather than presenting evidence justifying its restrictions, the state argued that abortion isn’t health care, isn’t a woman’s own decision, and that the amendment didn’t confer a fundamental right requiring strict scrutiny, she said.

The court recognized the state’s interest in protecting human life, but that alone didn’t justify the abortion laws.

The justices also said in a footnote that the constitutional amendment was intended to address issues raised by the Affordable Care Act, not to specifically address a right to abortion. Wyoming’s voters could consider an amendment more directly speaking to this issue, they suggested.

Justices John G. Fenn, Robert C. Jarosh, and now-retired Justice Kate M. Fox joined the opinion

Fenn wrote separately to say the majority shouldn’t have applied strict scrutiny because the amendment allows lawmakers to enact reasonable and necessary restrictions that don’t unduly infringe on the right to make one’s own health-care decisions. He nevertheless joined the result because the state didn’t meet this standard.

Justice Kari Gray dissented, saying strict scrutiny didn’t apply, and the abortion restrictions constituted reasonable and necessary restrictions on the right to make one’s own health-care decisions for the purpose of preserving prenatal life.

The Wyoming Attorney General’s Office represents the state. Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP and Robinson Bramlet LLC represent the plaintiffs.

The case is State v. Johnson, Wyo., No. S-24-0326, 1/6/26.