Abortion remains legal in Wyoming after the state’s Supreme Court struck down laws seeking to restrict the practice.
The court ruled in favor of an abortion clinic and its allies, who categorized the procedure as healthcare, a judgment that could have sweeping implications for how other states regulate the policy. Justices agreed that the laws limiting abortions violated a 2012 state constitutional amendment stating residents have the right to make personal healthcare decisions.
“A woman has a fundamental right to make her own health care decisions, including the decision to have an abortion,” the 4-1 ruling stated, handing a victory to Wellspring Health Access, the abortion access advocacy group Chelsea’s Fund, and four female plaintiffs.
The decision was criticized by Gov. Mark Gordon (R-WY), who backed state arguments that restricting abortion access does not violate the Wyoming constitution because it is not healthcare.
“This ruling may settle, for now, a legal question, but it does not settle the moral one, nor does it reflect where many Wyoming citizens stand, including myself. It is time for this issue to go before the people for a vote,” Gordon said, referring to a proposed constitutional amendment banning abortion that voters could consider this fall.
“I remain committed to the mission of saving our unborn. Every year that we delay the proper resolution of this issue results in more deaths of unborn children. This is a dilemma of enormous moral and social consequence,” he added.
The decision on Tuesday equates the right to healthcare access as the basis for a right to abortion, which appears to end a long legal saga over several 2022 and 2023 Wyoming abortion laws. One of the laws overturned Tuesday sought to ban abortion except in cases of rape, incest, and when the mother’s life is in danger. The other law would have made Wyoming the only state to explicitly ban medication or pills to end pregnancies.
In early 2022, lawmakers passed a trigger law that would have predominantly banned abortion if Roe v. Wade was overturned. But the restrictions did not take effect after the decision was overturned by the Supreme Court later that year due to a court challenge stemming from the 2012 constitutional amendment.
The following year, the legislature passed two more bills restricting abortions, but abortion-rights groups again sued to stop the laws from being implemented, with Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens ruling in their favor.
Wyoming Attorney General Keith Kautz appealed the trial court’s ban to the state’s Supreme Court after Owens ruled in November 2024 that the laws were unconstitutional.
Republicans in the state legislature have also pushed against expanding abortion access.
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In 2025, Republican state Sen. Cheri Steinmetz successfully pushed a bill providing a definition of healthcare that excludes abortion while allowing for limited exceptions for abortions to take place, including to save the life of the mother. But Gordon vetoed Senate File 125, arguing that by seeking to “prematurely define the term ‘health care’ the bill would “only perpetuate redundant legal challenges, add to the delay Wyoming has already witnessed in litigating the state’s ability to regulate abortion, and introduce further complexity into an already robust docket on abortion.”
Gordon said his veto would save the state from another layer of legal challenges and allow existing battles over abortion to play out in the courts.
