On Thursday, a judge blocked Wyoming’s first-in-the-nation law that outlawed abortion pills. The law was scheduled to take effect July 1.
As Townhall recently reported, medication abortion is a two-part regimen. A pregnant woman would take the drug mifepristone to stop an unborn baby from growing. Later on, the woman would take misoprostol, which would expel the unborn baby from her body. This method is used in the first trimester of pregnancy. According to the Guttmacher Institute, this method accounts for the majority of abortions in the United States.
Reportedly, Wyoming passed legislation banning abortion procedures in most cases, as well as restricting the abortion pill, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Pro-abortion advocated challenged the legislation (via the Associated Press):
Wyoming’s pill ban is being challenged by four women, including two obstetricians, and two nonprofit organizations. One of the groups, Wellspring Health Access, opened as the state’s first full-service abortion clinic in years in April following an arson attack in 2022.
They’re are also suing to stop a near-total ban on abortion enacted in Wyoming in March. Owens has suspended that law, too, and combined the two lawsuits.
Because abortion remains legal in Wyoming, banning abortion pills would require women to get more invasive surgical abortions instead, Marci Bramlet, an attorney for the ban opponents told Owens in Thursday’s hearing.
“It effectively tells people you must have open-heart surgery when a stent would do,” Bramlet said.
A state constitutional amendment enacted in 2012 also came into play in court arguments. The amendment passed in response to the Affordable Care Act, former President Barack Obama’s health care law, says Wyoming residents have the right to make their own health care decisions.
Reportedly, Teton County Judge Melissa Owens has blocked three pro-life pieces of legislation signed into law by Republican Gov. Mark Gordon, who appointed her.
Earlier this month, reports broke that a woman in the United Kingdom would face more than two years behind bars for taking medication abortion pills to end her pregnancy. As Townhall covered, the woman obtained the pills through “telemedicine” where she was dishonest about how far along she was in her pregnancy. The woman was in the third trimester and went into labor after taking the pills. The baby girl was born not breathing.
Townhall also covered how a recent poll showed that the majority of Americans disagree that mifepristone was vetted carefully enough to protect women’s health and safety.
“The majority of Americans understand that the abortion pill is dangerous and they see through the abortion lobby’s lies,” SBA President Majorie Dannenfelser said of the findings, adding that in the aftermath of Dobbs, the abortion lobby “has relied on abortion pills as a backstop as more than a dozen states have enacted strong protections for unborn babies and mothers.”
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