Wyoming Supreme Court throws out abortion bans, keeping procedure legal

Jan 6 (Reuters) - Abortions remained legal ⁠in Wyoming after the ⁠state's ‍Supreme Court threw out two laws on Tuesday that banned the procedure, with a majority of justices ruling the laws violated the state's constitution.

In 2023, responding ‍to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling the prior year that there was no ​constitutional right to abortion, Wyoming lawmakers passed the Life is a Human Right Act, which banned people from performing ​abortions with limited exceptions, including rape or incest. A second law made it illegal to prescribe or dispense drugs that end a pregnancy.

A group of women and medical professionals sued the Western U.S. state, which ​is predominantly rural and leans conservative, and a lower court blocked the laws from going into effect. They won on Tuesday, with a 4-1 majority of justices agreeing that the ​laws violated a relatively recent amendment to the Wyoming Constitution. That amendment, added in 2012, gives every "competent adult" the right "to make ‌his or her own health care decisions."

"Although we recognize the State's interest in protecting the life that an abortion would end, we conclude the ​State did not meet its burden of justifying the ⁠abortion statutes' restrictions on a woman's right to make her own health care decisions, as is expressly protected by the Wyoming Constitution," Chief Justice ‌Lynne J. Boomgaarden wrote in the court's majority opinion.

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon, a Republican who opposes abortions, called the ruling "profoundly unfortunate" in a statement.

"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," he said. "This ‌is a dilemma of enormous moral and social consequence."

He called on the state's legislature to pass a new amendment to the Wyoming Constitution to allow for abortion bans.

Since the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, 13 states ‍have abortion bans in effect, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, a nonprofit advocacy group, and another 18 states, including Wyoming, have sharply ⁠limited abortions.

Chelsea's Fund, a nonprofit group that works to provide abortion access in Wyoming and was one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, welcomed the ruling, saying in a statement it ensured "neighbors, community members and families keep the freedom to make their own reproductive healthcare decisions."

(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)

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