Freedom Caucus concocts phony pregnancy center crisis

Wyoming is facing a maternal care crisis. But instead of figuring out how to support women who actually want to have babies by increasing their access to OB-GYN care, the supposedly pro-family Freedom Caucus is more worried about protecting anti-abortion pregnancy centers. 

The Freedom Caucus-backed Wyoming pregnancy center autonomy and rights of expression bill is a textbook case of “a solution seeking a problem.” 

Why does this bill stand out in comparison to the countless others that never should have seen the light of day? Because there isn’t a single instance of harm to these unregulated pregnancy centers committed by a person or entity in Wyoming that any of the bill’s backers can cite as a reason why they need special protection.

On the flip side, Wellspring Health Access in Casper, the state’s only abortion clinic, was set on fire in May 2022, delaying its opening by nearly a year and causing nearly $300,000 in damages. I don’t recall any state lawmakers rushing to provide more protections for pro-choice clinics.

But supporters of this bill, who want you to call it the CARE Act, also want you to believe that the state and its political subdivisions, including cities and counties, pose a real threat to pregnancy centers. The bill would prohibit governmental entities from enacting laws, ordinances or policies that would interfere with a pregnancy center’s mission.

The current bill, which was approved 12-2 by the Joint Labor, Health and Social Services Committee, was resurrected by Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, R-Cody, co-chair of that panel and chair of the far-right Freedom Caucus. The version she sponsored earlier this year was passed by the House 46-14, but died when the Senate didn’t consider it.

Wyoming has 11 pregnancy centers. The bill says the nonprofit organizations “encourage women to make positive life choices by equipping them with complete and accurate information regarding their pregnancy options and the development of their unborn children.”

Several people challenged those false claims.

“Because the ideology of these centers is allowed to take priority over evidence-based medicine, women are not guaranteed accurate information about all of their options, which they deserve,” Sophia Gomelsky of Laramie said. “Instead, they’re met with misinformation, shame, and pressure to continue pregnancies, even in cases where that may endanger their health, safety and dignity. 

“That’s not free speech, it’s medical deception,” she added. “And this Legislature should in no way be in the business of protecting it.”

The bill contains a ludicrous laundry list of things state and local governments cannot require pregnancy centers to do, like offer or perform abortions; provide or distribute abortion-inducing drugs or contraception; or “interview, hire or continue to employ any person who does not affirm the center’s mission statement or agree to comply with the center’s pro-life ethic and operating procedure.”

In another shocking provision, authorities cannot keep a pregnancy center from providing diapers, baby clothes, baby furniture, formula or similar items because it doesn’t perform, refer or counsel in favor of contraception. 

Does the Freedom Caucus really believe we have to worry about living in an Orwellian nightmare where police use battering rams on a pregnancy center’s front door and tell startled workers, “Start giving out these condoms, I’m confiscating those diapers!”

Here’s my favorite exchange from the meeting:

“It’s always interesting to me how worried we are about the next generation, and yet we’re killing the next generation,” Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle, said to Gomelsky. “So what do you have to say about that?”

Gomelsky explained that she’s Jewish, and in her religion, it’s considered a fetus, and not a baby, until birth.

“There’s no such thing as an unborn child, and certainly not in science. And so that isn’t the next generation,” Gomelsky said. “I’m the next generation; I’m sitting here in front of you. And what I’m asking you guys to do is protect us while we’re here.”

Linda Burt, a Cheyenne attorney and former head of the Wyoming ACLU, said a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court ruling protecting nonprofits’ free speech rights against being forced to provide abortion information makes the bill unnecessary.

“Exempting any kind of nonprofit corporation — which is what this is — is providing special legislation for one kind of nonprofit corporation,” Burt said. “It opens the door for everybody to ask for special protections.”

You know who could use some more protection from actual acts of violence? Abortion clinics.

In January, President Donald Trump limited enforcement of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, a federal law created to safeguard abortion clinics, patients and providers. He dismissed a handful of current ongoing FACE Act investigations and instructed prosecutors to apply the law only in “extraordinary circumstances” such as death, extreme bodily harm or significant property damage.

Incredibly, Trump pardoned 23 people for FACE convictions ranging from harassing pregnant patients to breaking into clinics and stealing fetal tissue. Several have said they plan to return to targeting and invading abortion clinics.

Joan Brust of Casper testified that for over a year she was a patient escort for the Wellspring abortion clinic, which is located near a pregnancy center. 

“What I saw coming from the pregnancy centers was not all ‘Kumbayah,’’’ she related. “They had volunteers and employees harassing the patients who were trying to go to the abortion clinic. They would offer them flowers and prayers and sweet and kind words, but they would also block their cars and try to get them to come down to their clinic.”

The Freedom Caucus steamrolled two more anti-abortion bills through the Legislature during the most recent session, one designed to regulate abortion clinics out of business by requiring them to operate as surgical centers, and another to require ultrasounds.

The two new laws were blocked by a state judge. A near-total ban and one targeting medications, meanwhile, were both ruled unconstitutional by a state district court judge in Teton County, which the state of Wyoming appealed to the Wyoming Supreme Court. Its final decision hasn’t been rendered. 

But lawmakers like Rodriguez-Williams are using the time her committee has been tasked to find solutions to Wyoming’s “maternity deserts” — areas without a hospital or birth center offering obstetric care and without any obstetric physicians — to keep beating the anti-abortion drum.

It’s typical of the Freedom Caucus’ preferred method of lawmaking: Manufacture a crisis where none exists to gain an ideological edge that can be used during political campaigns to motivate their base and get elected.

Correction: This story has been updated to correctly attribute public testimony to Sophia Gomelsky. —Ed.