The ongoing halt to abortions in Wyoming will continue for at least another week after a judge Thursday said it will take that long before she could even set a schedule to hear arguments for an emergency pause on new abortion restrictions.
The debate over two new laws restricting abortion procedures took place via a telephone conference before 9th District Judge Melissa Owens of Teton County. She was ready to set a date to hear arguments on a temporary and emergency ban against two new laws — one established a string of new regulations that forced Wyoming’s only full-service abortion clinic to stop seeing patients two weeks ago — when attorneys for Gov. Mark Gordon objected.
They recently filed a motion asking Owens to transfer the case to Natrona County. That’s where lawyers for abortion providers filed their original suit, along with a request for an emergency hearing and temporary halt to the new regulations, on Feb. 28.
Eleven days after that filing and without any action from the Natrona County court, the doctors and clinics dismissed the case in Casper and refiled it in Teton County.
“This is a case of forum shopping.”
John Woykovsky
Gordon’s attorney, Senior Assistant Attorney General John Woykovsky, claimed the abortion providers, their backers, two doctors and another woman, purposefully refiled in Teton County seeking a friendly judge. Owens has ruled on other litigation challenging Wyoming’s anti-abortion laws, striking down two abortion bans passed in 2023. That case is currently in front of the Wyoming Supreme Court.
Court papers filed by the abortion providers make it clear “that this is a case of forum shopping,” Woykovsky said. “They essentially state that they were dissatisfied with Judge Forgey’s response to their motion for a [temporary restraining order] and hope to obtain a more favorable result in this court.”
Woykovsky made Gordon’s point formally in a motion to change the case’s venue back to Natrona County.
Citing her court’s packed schedule and the issues at hand, Owens set a hearing for Friday, March 21, on Gordon’s change of venue request only.
“The only thing the court can at this point be prepared to hear next Friday with the time we have allotted would be the change of venue hearing,” she said. “So that’s all that we’ll be setting at this point.”
One issue at a time
Lawyers for the providers and doctors argued for an earlier hearing and for one that would consider both the change of venue and an emergency request to block the two new abortion-restricting laws. But Owens didn’t agree to those requests.
The doctors and providers filed the case in Natrona County, site of Casper’s Wellspring Health Access, which provides in-clinic abortions. They refiled the case in Teton County because a doctor in Jackson refers patients to various other clinics and advises patients who seek medical care, including abortions.
“Plaintiffs and their patients are experiencing ongoing, severe, and irreparable injury — including direct harms to Plaintiffs and their patients in Teton County,” the providers said when they dismissed the case in Casper and refiled it in Jackson. “Plaintiffs have no choice but to dismiss the Prior [Natrona County] Action … and re-file it … in the hope of securing a timely hearing.”
At issue are two new abortion-restricting laws. One creates a series of new regulations on abortion clinics in Wyoming by requiring them to be licensed as “ambulatory surgical centers.” The second requires abortion patients to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound and a 48-hour waiting period before receiving abortion medications.
Because of the new laws, Wellspring Health Access, the only clinic in Wyoming that provides in-clinic abortions, said it has stopped performing abortions. It had performed 71 abortions between the start of the year and Feb. 27. In the five days after the laws went into effect, it referred 56 patients to other clinics for abortion-related services, almost all of them out of state, according to court papers.
Ignorance has become a badge of honor that stands in for accomplishments that may have gone unrealized. This statement isn’t meant to sound snarky, but to stoke thought. Our nation is being dragged backwards because the larger part of the population is uneducated, unaccomplished, and unaware.
We already had this fight on so many levels. Abortion is a personal decision. My daughters have given me beautiful grandkids and the thought of them ever being in this position pains me only because I fear that they will grow up in a country that forces them to bow to the patriarchy.
The women who have been manipulated to think that this is about babies are exactly why women should experience life beyond a kitchen and motherhood. I know I sound like an old fuddy duddy, but I really never thought God would be used so egregiously in so many ways to turn back the calendar to a time when women were property.
No matter how one feels about the morality of abortion, one has to admit both of these bills are fundamentally dishonest. There are no medically valid reasons for either. Their masquerade as being medically necessary flies directly in the face of the Wyoming Constitution, which we amended with an astounding 77% vote to ensure, “Each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions.”
Might we now pass a law that requires anyone purchasing a gun under their 2nd Amendment rights to undergo a colonoscopy, “to give them time to consider the gravity of their decision to acquire a life-threatening device”?
We have a constitution for a reason. When put to a vote, the people of Wyoming said, loud and clear, “hands off!”. I don’t doubt the sincerity of those bringing forward these purely punitive statutes, but they are transparently trying to undo a clear constitutional right, and they should extend their claimed embrace of morality to include simple honesty.
Hey, I like your colonoscopy idea, but I suggest that to be fair it should apply to men only who want to purchase a life-threatening device, and that there should also be a 48 hour waiting period between their colonoscopy and the gun purchase, and maybe, being big strong brave guys, they don’t warrant sedation.
Abortion kills a fetus , there are several stages of growth before a fetus is developed into a human at which point the mother delivers. Religious extremists who are trying to make up for their own sins will never find true peace with God forcing women to breed. Men must take responsibility for their own sexuality. Forcing decisions out of fear, guilt, and one’s imaginary friend helps no one in society. The extreme movement to take away a woman’s right to own her body as men do is a perfect example of how extremely insecure men have become.
71 deaths in only two months.