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The abortion pills will remain legal in Wyoming for now, after a judge ruled Thursday that the first law to ban them in the United States will not go into effect on July 1 as scheduled, while the lawsuit continues.
Teton County Judge Melissa Owens halted the state’s new ban on abortion pills Thursday, just days before the law was set to go into effect on July 1.
While other states have instituted de facto bans on the drug by broadly banning abortion, Wyoming became the first US state in March to specifically ban abortion pillswhich were used in more than half of all abortions in the US in 2020.
Abortion pills will remain legal in that state, pending the outcome of a lawsuit against the ban brought by a group that includes nonprofit organizations, medical providers and Wyoming’s Wellspring Health Access abortion clinic.
The plaintiffs are also asking halt a near-total ban on abortion enacted in Wyoming in March. Judge Owens also stayed that law and combined the two lawsuits.
Since abortion is still legal in Wyoming, banning abortion pills would require women to undergo more invasive surgical abortions, Marci Bramlet, the lawyer for the ban opponents, told Owens at Thursday’s hearing.
“It effectively tells people they should have open-heart surgery when they should have a stent,” Bramlet said.
In recent years, abortions with two types of pills, typically taken days apart, have become the preferred method of terminating a pregnancy in the US, in part because the process offers a less invasive alternative. than surgical abortions.
Until Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon signed legislation banning medical abortions, no state had passed a law specifically banning abortion pills, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.
However, 13 states enacted blanket abortion bans that included medical abortions, and 15 states already had limited access to the pills.
Starting with suspending an abortion ban that was set to go into effect last summer, Judge Owens has now blocked three abortion bans in Wyomingsigned into law by Gordon, the Republican governor who appointed her to office.
With information from Politico and CBS News
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