CHEYENNE–Gov. Mark Gordon signed legislation that will place new and more onerous regulations on Wyoming clinics that perform abortions, potentially forcing the state’s lone provider of in-clinic abortions to close its doors.
Casper’s Wellspring Health Access is the one facility in Wyoming that provides in-clinic abortions. It’s also among the plaintiffs who sued the state over its abortion bans.
The governor’s office announced he’d signed the bill in a press release Thursday night. Gordon had until midnight to either sign it, veto it or let it become law without his signature.
“Make no mistake—this law directly targets our clinic with the explicit goal of forcing us out of business,” Julie Burkhart, Wellspring founder and president, said in a press release Thursday. “By doing so, it limits healthcare options, increases costs, and puts countless individuals at risk.”
Wellspring would be filing a lawsuit “seeking a restraining order to stop this unjust law from being enacted,” Burkhart said.
Gordon vetoed similar legislation last year, largely blaming an amendment that tacked on a mandatory transvaginal ultrasound before taking abortion medication. That requirement is in a separate bill this year and is currently up for consideration by the governor.
House Bill 42, “Regulation of surgical abortions,” requires facilities that provide abortions to be licensed as ambulatory surgical centers, which are health care facilities that perform surgeries but are not hospitals. The classification comes with Department of Health inspections, rules and regulations, such as building codes.
Effective immediately, the bill also requires clinic doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a hospital not more than 10 miles away.
“Abortion currently remains legal in Wyoming, thus the need to regulate abortion,” Worland Republican Rep. Martha Lawley, the bill’s main sponsor, told lawmakers this session.
Ahead of Gordon’s decision, Wellspring said it had not yet decided if it would challenge the law on the basis that Wyoming’s constitution prohibits special laws — or statutes that apply to a specific group of people, things or places, rather than the general public.
Burkhart called the law “blatantly unconstitutional” on Thursday and “in direct opposition to the Wyoming Constitution, which enumerates the rights of the people of Wyoming to make their own health care decisions without government intervention.”
In November, a Teton County judge ruled Wyoming’s abortion bans are unconstitutional.
This is a breaking news story and may be updated.
They won’t be happy until women die from lack of healthcare. This issue is a mix of religion, misogyny, and power pushed by hypocritical Christian men who want control of women and everything else. If I can get my daughters out of this state, I’ll be gone with them and our grandkids.
There’s something mentally wrong with the MAGA crowd.
All unwanted pregnancies are caused by men.
Men are fertile 24/7/365; women are fertile for about 24 hours once a month.
Time to turn the tables and make men responsible, such as mandatory vasectomies upon puberty until each man can prove himself to be financially and emotionally responsible to father children. Only then will the vasectomy be reversed.
As a woman, I must ask: What gives men (our Legislators are predominantly men after all) the right of control over a woman’s body? (I am an adopted child so my birth mother chose not to have an abortion. However, her eldest daughter, my half-sister, has had several. It’s definitely a matter of choice, not political control!)
Nope, Gov Gordon. Interesting and very disappointing that no such invasive measures are required for ALL men for medical care. Just ridiculous. Wyoming SHOULD do better.
This isn’t about abortion, it’s all about the religious right punishing women for daring to have sex. This is what happens when religion feels the need to be in control. More is coming, mark my words.