CHEYENNE, Wyoming (LifeSiteNews) — The Wyoming Senate narrowly failed to advance a proposed constitutional amendment to protect state pro-life laws from judicial activism, with nine Republicans helping kill it.
Last month, the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled 4-1 that the Life Is a Human Right Act (which bans most abortions) and its 2024 ban on so-called “medication” abortions both violated language in Section 38 of the Wyoming Constitution guaranteeing the right of “competent adults” to make “health care decisions,” including the right to pay or accept “direct payment for health care without imposition of penalties or fines for doing so,” with the state legislature having only the discretion to “determine reasonable and necessary restrictions” to “protect the health and general welfare of the people.”
This decision effectively read a “right” to abortion in the state constitution, rejecting arguments that abortion is not health care and that, even if it was, the fact would remain that abortion is not strictly a woman’s “own” health care decision because it also affects the health of her child, who is a living human from conception, and therefore Section 38 could not cover it.
In response, Republican Gov. Mark Gordon called upon lawmakers to “pass and place a clear constitutional amendment on my desk during the upcoming Budget Session” to “trump any and all judicial decisions.” Lawmakers quickly answered the call with Senate Joint Resolution 7, which would have amended Section 38’s language to replace determining “reasonable and necessary restrictions” with determining “what constitutes health care for purposes of this section.”
“The adoption of this amendment would provide that, notwithstanding any other provision of this Constitution, only the legislature, not the courts, may define what constitutes ‘health care’ for the purposes of this right,” the resolution stated. “This amendment would also provide that legislation regulating health care shall be subject to judicial review under the ‘rational basis’ standard of review.”
However, the Cowboy State Daily reports that the vote on the resolution was 20-11, falling one vote short of the two-thirds majority threshold for advancing to floor debate and final passage (which in turn would have placed the measure on the ballot this fall for voters to decide).
Both of the Senate’s two Democrat members voted against it, as did nine Republicans, some of whom insisted they were pro-life but feared unintended implications from the specific language.
“The problem is, it opened up all of health care to be defined by the legislature. The unintended consequences could be catastrophic in years to come,” said state Sen. Evie Brennan, who said the legislature should craft a different response to the supreme court ruling “in a very thoughtful manner that does not include the overreach of government into all areas of our health.”
The fall of Roe v. Wade restored states’ prerogative to fully determine their own abortion policies for the first time in nearly half a century, but Wyoming’s ordeal highlights the continuing battles faced by pro-lifers at the state level.
Thirteen states currently ban all or most abortions, but the abortion lobby continues to work feverishly preserve “access” through a variety of means, most prominently deregulated interstate distribution of abortion pills, enabling the abortion industry to shift much of their business focus from surgical abortions to mailing abortion pills into states where abortion is illegal, to be taken in the privacy of one’s home with no medical oversight.