Wyoming seeks to revive abortion ban blocked by judge

By Brendan Pierson

April 16 (Reuters) - Wyoming on Wednesday urged the state's highest court to restore its abortion ban that includes the nation's only explicit prohibition against medication abortion, which a lower court judge blocked last year.

"The compelling interest here is to protect the life of the unborn baby," Special Assistant Attorney General Jay Jerde told the Supreme Court of Wyoming. "From conception, an unborn baby, as a human being, has a right to life."

Marci Bramlet, a lawyer for the abortion clinic, doctors and women who sued to challenge the law, said the ban goes against the "libertarian spirit" of the "western frontier" and violates women's basic rights.

"The decision whether and when to have children is among the most profoundly personal and private decisions a person makes in their lifetime," she said.

Teton County District Court Judge Melissa Owens in November blocked the law, partly because she found that it violated a 2011 amendment to the state constitution stating that a "competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions." The amendment was passed because of conservative fear that the federal Affordable Care Act, passed the previous year, would restrict healthcare choices.

Jerde said the court should consider voters' intent in adopting the amendment, and noted that its proponents never mentioned abortion.

"The intent was always to find a way to push back on the Affordable Care Act," Jerde said.

He also said that, even if the court decided that abortion was a kind of healthcare choice covered by the amendment, a woman choosing an abortion is "not making her own healthcare decision" but "also negatively affecting the health of the unborn baby."

The five justices, who were all appointed by Republican governors, appeared skeptical of the plaintiffs' arguments against the law. When Bramlet argued that the ban unfairly restricted women's, but not men's, reproductive choices, Chief Justice Kate Fox countered that women and men were "not similarly situated."

Wyoming's abortion ban took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could ban abortion in 2022. The state additionally passed the first-of-its-kind ban specifically targeting medication abortion in 2023, though other states' abortion bans also cover medication abortion.

The case is State of Wyoming v. Johnson, Supreme Court of Wyoming, No. S-24-0326.

For the state: Special Assistant Attorney General Jay Jerde

For plaintiffs: Marci Bramlet of Robinson Bramlet; and Peter Modlin of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher

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