Wyoming legislators who passed the state’s latest anti-abortion bill and made it law by overriding Gov. Mark Gordon’s veto hid behind false claims that they are making women safer and treating them with compassion.
Opinion
If they really want to accomplish that, lawmakers will stop interfering with a woman’s state constitutional right to make her own health care decision to have a safe, legal abortion, and quit trying to shame and punish them.
There is absolutely nothing safe or compassionate about mandating a transvaginal ultrasound before a woman can be prescribed abortion pills. In his veto message Gordon recognized that this “intimate, personally invasive, and often medically unnecessary procedure goes too far.”
Transvaginal ultrasounds are performed by inserting a wand-like device into a woman’s vagina to check for a fetal heartbeat. House Speaker Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, told the House Labor, Health and Social Services Committee that it’s compassionate for the state to let mothers “hear that heartbeat and be able to know that that baby is real.”
But medication abortions are FDA-approved to be performed up to the 10th week of pregnancy, a time when the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says what is interpreted as a heartbeat in many state laws “is actually electrically-induced flickering of a portion of fetal tissue that will become the heart as the embryo develops.”
So, the sounds Neiman and other anti-abortion legislators want Wyoming women seeking an abortion to hear — and obviously change their minds — is what the medical group describes as “out of step with the anatomical and clinical realities of that stage of pregnancy.”
Let’s talk about something that is real that Neiman didn’t mention, but Gordon said in his veto message: The legislation could retraumatize women who are victims of childhood sexual abuse, rape or incest but not exempted by the bill.
That’s the reasonable position of a governor who always stresses he’s “pro-life.” Still, Gordon signed an earlier bill aimed at regulating the state’s only surgical abortion clinic out of existence. No matter where some Republican officials land on the abortion issue, there always seems to be room for laws that make a legal procedure inaccessible.
The two bills are a combination punch against abortion that lawmakers will keep throwing year after year. They insist — by any means necessary — on effectively making abortion unattainable while the Wyoming Supreme Court decides to affirm or reject a lower court ruling that the state’s two existing abortion bans are unconstitutional.
Far-right lawmakers didn’t need to pass House Bill 64, “Chemical abortion-ultrasound requirement,” especially if they really believe Wyoming’s highest court will buy the state’s absurd argument that abortion isn’t health care. It’s nothing but a stop-gap measure to erect another barrier if they lose.
Last November, 9th Judicial District Court Judge Melissa Owens in Teton County ruled the state’s bans on surgical and medication abortions violate the constitutional protections voters overwhelmingly approved in 2012 to ensure that competent adults can make their own health care decisions.
Owens wrote that Wyoming’s abortion bans “suspend a woman’s right to make her own healthcare decisions during the entire term of her pregnancy and are not reasonable or necessary to protect the health and general welfare of the people.”
Several of the plaintiffs who won that case — including Wellspring Health Access, two OB-GYN physicians, a birthing-age woman and a nonprofit group that raises money for women to get abortions — have already sued the state over HB 64 and House Bill 42, “Regulation of surgical abortions.”
The latter targeted Casper’s Wellspring clinic — the victim of arson in 2022 that caused $300,000 in damages — by piling unnecessary restrictions on the only facility in the state to offer surgical abortions, more accurately called “procedural” abortions, since they do not require incisions.
Wellspring stopped the procedures after Gordon signed the bill into law, though it remains open to provide other women’s health care services.
The lawsuit seeks a temporary injunction on the enforcement of both laws while the 7th Judicial District Court in Natrona County decides if they violate pregnant women’s constitutional rights.
Don’t far-right legislators who continue passing these laws realize that they will always be challenged, delaying them further and creating chaos in the state?
The ultrasound mandate also requires a woman to wait at least 48 hours after the procedure to get a prescription for mifepristone and misoprostol. Both oral medications have a long safety and efficacy record and are used for nearly two-thirds of U.S. abortions.
The delay is an expensive burden for rural women who will have to spend two days away from work and pay for child care, transportation and lodging, plus the mandatory ultrasound.
The new law makes it a misdemeanor for a physician or pharmacist to dispense the pills without verifying that an ultrasound has been performed. The penalty is a fine up to $9,000 and/or imprisonment for a maximum of six months.
Jailing and fining medical providers is not what legislators should do in a state that has already closed four maternity wards in recent years. Nearly one-quarter of women live more than 30 miles away from a birthing facility, making much of Wyoming a maternity care desert that forces them to travel long distances, often in inclement weather, to deliver babies. Yet lawmakers offered no solutions, preferring to potentially lock up some of the scarce providers we have.
“Making it easier for mothers to have babies in Wyoming and supporting them afterward is a far better course [than HB 64],” Gordon noted in his veto letter. He’s right about that, and it’s time other Republicans heed that warning.
Minority Floor Leader Mike Yin, D-Jackson, told his fellow House Labor committee members that it’s mind boggling to hear Republicans express the need to enforce bodily autonomy on health care procedures like blood donations. Let’s not forget the Freedom Caucus’ bills against the power of the state to mandate COVID-19 vaccines and masks.
“Yet this [ultrasound bill] is one where we’re telling women that they have to have a medical procedure done against their will, or their medical providers will go to jail,” Yin said. “I think that’s the antithesis when we talk about freedom in the state of Wyoming.”
In late 2021, New Hampshire passed a similar transvaginal ultrasound mandate. Six months later, after women and providers complained about this barrier to health care that served only to shame women and put up roadblocks to abortion access, state lawmakers repealed it.
The same thing could happen in Wyoming next year if legislators are forced to listen to valid concerns or risk losing their jobs at the polls.
Emma Laurent, political director of Wyoming United for Freedom, a nonpartisan pro-choice group, provided one of the most sensible takes on abortion that I heard during the session. This shouldn’t be a political issue.
“Forcing non-medically needed ultrasounds on women seeking medication abortions in the early gestational stage of pregnancy,” Laurent said, “is not only a coercive act to guilt women to keep pregnancies, but discriminates against women by stripping us of our bodily autonomy and the social compact that we as an entire gender can make our own health care decisions.
“Anything less is an admission that you believe women are second-class citizens,” she added.
That’s speaking truth to power. If we want to stop Wyoming women from being hurt and protect their reproductive rights, we must put legislators who hypocritically preach against government overreach but vote for bills like this on notice: We’ll see you at the next election.
Correction: Rep. Mike Yin’s legislative district was updated in this story. —Ed.
Quote from this article: “Don’t far-right legislators who continue passing these laws realize that they will always be challenged, delaying them further and creating chaos in the state?”
Well, don’t far-left media commentators who continue to write against pro-life standards realize that the people of Wyoming elected three completely different legislative bodies over the past five years that all passed laws against abortions in the state?
Hello, abortion is murder. Murder is illegal.
I have a question: will these same legislators provide financial support for babies born to women who cannot afford another child? Or will these same women be demonized for asking for Medicaid, food stamps, and CHIP? It seems to me that the compassionate interest of anti-abortion supporters stops the moment the baby is born. Plain and straightforward – hypocrisy at its best!
If you don’t have a uterus, back off back off!!!
I’ll lay odds that most of the men passing these bills are not doctors and could not honestly tell you how often a woman has a period. Or what ovaries do. Fallopian tubes? Got any idea what they are or what their function is? If you don’t understand basic anatomy then what the hell are you doing passing bills that affect it?
Having only daughters and granddaughters, what is being done to stop the men that impregnate the woman? Maybe chemical castration. Bet those politicians wouldn’t ever go for that.
This is all terrible, but the author seems to forget that probably a vast majority of women in Wyoming who vote, vote MAGA and therefore enabled all this to begin with.
Totally agree. Many are under the thumb of their fake christian husbands, and apparently many (male and female) don’t vote.
This is a well written, well stated, article. Thank you. The Freedom Caucus is misnamed, as it seems as though the Freedom they represent applies only to white straight males.
I’ve got a solution for you, move to California I’m sure they would welcome you with open arms, but you would have to pay for 6 or 8 abortions for someone else
When you end a life, you have committed murder. It’s that simple. Trying to manipulate words to make it sound like it’s anything else is sociopathic. It’s insane that in a society as supposedly as advanced as we view ourselves there are still people out there lying to themselves and the people around them that killing an unborn child is anything less. A separate and individual DNA from the mother is created at the moment of conception separating the child from its mother. There is no argument that changes that fact. The fact that there are people in this world that will argue that it is actually their right to have the baby inside them tortured and dismembered and removed from their body only to be tossed in a trash can or sold for parts is insanely barbaric.
Easy for you to say, as a man. Have you ever been afraid of being impregnated while these types of prohibitive laws were enacted? Afraid of rape? Didn’t think so.
I’m a woman and have never been afraid of rape. Act like a victim and become one. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy.
By the way, the rape argument doesn’t fly. Hasn’t for years. Get with the 2020’s.
Why should there even be a debate. Abortion should be banned. God values all life. After all, God loves you. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16
It’s human life, in a developing stage.
Period.
The time to choose is before the activity that is meant to create life.
Pretty straightforward.
I do have a question how rapes per year do we get in Wyoming? I know a girl who was a rape victim and still kept her baby. I never thought a innocent baby life was no important.
Let lawmakers get raped and forced to give birth to a child they not only never wanted but also relive the trauma over and over! Makes me ill that we are going backwards in time!
All I saw were a bunch men legislating these anti-abortion moves. They would be singing a different tune if THEY were the ones getting impregnated.
There has to be an invasive procedure for men that they have to do before they can take viagra
Yes and I know abortion wouldn’t be an issue if all males were neutered at age 16. If a male can prove he is capable of being a father then the procedure can be reversed. Women do not get pregnant ALONE.
Bunch of old men
*sigh* It’s very simple to research the number of women legislators who voted for this. Oh right, research…
Where was WyoFile’s outrage when masks and experimental injections were declared mandatory by government, business, and media alike? *crickets*
I was born in Wyoming 68 years ago and have been voting since it was legal for me to vote.
My first comment is directed to the legislature in general. This is beyond doubt the worst legislative body that we have had and I have seen several ones that were real bad.
This beyond any shadow of a doubt is the most ignorant bill I have ever seen. Let’s violate a woman’s body and make it legal.
The governor was absolutely right in vetoing this bill. He knows it’s unconstitutional and I am guessing lawsuits are already being drafted to prove that this bill is unconstitutional. How much money do we the people of Wyoming have to spend defending this nonsense? They say they want to save us money and yet they are going to be blowing money.
My second comment is to the people of Wyoming. You voted these people into the legislature because you were fooled by their advertising, much of which was paid for by out of state concerns and who knows maybe by foreign concerns.
Pay attention next election and get these idiots out of there. Vote for some good Republicans Or some good Democrats. I have voted Democrat and I have voted Republican and in some cases I haven’t voted. But,I can honestly say I have never voted for ignorance and that’s what these people are.
I’m guessing the next thing they’re going to do is outlaw vasectomies as that interferes with a woman’s ability to get pregnant. The males will have to take a test to prove that their semen is no longer capable of producing a child before they can get a vasectomy. oh wait, they would never pass a bill that goes against the good old boy philosophy. What happened to we are the equality state
Childbirth is a right and a choice
for a woman as it is her right to choose her healthcare and to choose to get an abortion or not.
We the people of Wyoming voted on a constitutional amendment that we do not want government interfering with our healthcare in any way. These freedumb caucus individuals say that we have to protect our constitution yet they are putting forth laws that violate our constitutional rights. They want us to be able to carry guns anywhere as they say it’s part of the constitution. But, when it comes to a woman’s right to make a choice, they say no no no no…….You cannot make that decision. We are smarter than you.
This may be the wrong word But these freedumb caucus members, male or female, are Sicko’s and I think many of them are perverted. They get their kicks from trying to rape a woman with a probe even though they may have already been raped.
I am not sure how they can live with themselves after making such a law. Again to the people of Wyoming, let’s get them out of there.
Bunch of old men
If you ram that ultrasound wand up any of lawmakers a$$e$ you will be unable to find a heartbeat, ever.
Quite possibly their hope is they will be asked to perform the procedure.
The definition of second degree sexual assault in Wyoming (W.S. 6-2-303), “Involves sexual contact or sexual intrusion under specified circumstances like threatening to retaliate, using means to prevent resistance, administering a substance to impair a victim, using a position of authority, or in the course of providing care to a patient.” It is punishable by not less than two years nor more than 20 years in prison. How is it then that a legislative body isn’t held to account if a woman reports to law enforcement that in the process of attempting to get an abortion she has been forced by someone in a position of authority (our legislature) to submit to having a probe shoved inside of her vagina and threatening her with not being able to have an abortion if she doesn’t submit? This probe is to satisfy their need, not hers. It is unwanted contact of the most private part of a woman’s body. It is rape.
It is a medical procedure.
It gives the clearest and most defined images of the unborn human being with distinctly separate DNA, inside of the mother’s uterus.
For you to call it “rape” is less accurate than me calling the ending of a human being’s life in-utero, “murder”.
Women don’t want it. They don’t care what you think.
It is sexual assault if the woman is forced to do it.
No one is “forced” to have this ultrasound done, it is a choice.
The law says that if a woman wants to get an abortion, they have to get this done. That is not a choice.
As a man, you hardly have a right to an opinion on this subject.
A distinct and separate child inherits one set of chromosomes from its mother and one set from its father.
A man/father of a developing child should absolutely have more than just an “opinion” on whether his child is thrown in the trash or not. Knowing a man’s “opinions” on matters like this might be a good idea for a woman to know, before she conceives a child with that man.
Beside being absolutely not compassionate to the female make decisions for her own body, who is going to pay for it if it isn’t concidered medically nessessary and the insurance company can say no to paying for it?
Wyoming does not have the right to enforce this procedure on women who can make their own decisions about their own health. Grow up guys, what if you had to have some machine (wand) stuffed up your penis before you could get Viagra? Thought so…. no that violates my body!
Once again, men in Wyoming show their true colors as misogynists. In fairness, they should be shown the same respect shown women. In order to be able to receive the ED meds, an anal probe with the exact same equipment 48 hours prior to dispensing the medications. My guess is my body, my choice will be the first words uttered.
Women do not owe offspring to the state. Women alone take all the physical risks of pregnancy, birth, and associated risks afterward, and are granted the right to make decisions without coercion by the government. Excellent article, Mr Drake.
Religious fanatics in the Wyoming legislature are trying to mandate physical assaults on women seeking health care! This law must not stand.
There are so many issues to address here. Let me make it clear, abortion would not be the right choice for me personally, however, it may be for someone else.
1. The government, state or federal has no business dictating medical procedures. PERIOD! Medical procedures are between a patient and their doctor!
It’s abortion now but what next?
2. Everything about this law violates HIPPA. Doctors and pharmacist are not allowed by LAW to discuss anyone’s medical information with anyone else.
3. Wyoming has made no provision to care for all these babies and mothers. A lot of the time it does not affect the deadbeat sperm donars that want nothing to do with the situation. Women and children suffer.
4. Humane treatment for expectant mother’s? Was she humanely raped? Is it humane to loose your life trying to have this child?
Wyoming, you cannot make a Constitutional Ammendment saying we have the right to choose our Healthcare treatments and then turn around and say we are going to limit Healthcare for women. This is unconstitutional.
This attitude and legislative action is horrifying.
Plan B/Emergency Contraception is taken within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse.
Correct me if I am wrong but an ultrasound is NOT needed to get Plan B.
No, this is exactly what this is. They can’t get Plan B pills without the ultrasound.
Actually, I’m not sure. Sorry I jumped in pre-research on Plan B status. Sorry.
Why is the District Court dragging its feet on scheduling a hearing for an injunction? Are the judges being threatened or are they unable to do their job objectively?
Just more of the republican party’s war on women. They will apparently stop at nothing to take women’s rights away.
Women are just treated like cattle in the supposedly equality state. Attention women don’t move here .
It can’t be said often enough: “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”
Sadly patients at the Wyoming State Hospital have more rights than our Wyoming women. They are allowed to say no to any treatment. In order for a treatment to forced it has to go before a court.
I don’t see how this horrible law can possibly survive a court challenge.