The ongoing halt to abortions in Wyoming will continue for at least another week after a judge Thursday said it will take that long before she could even set a schedule to hear arguments for an emergency pause on new abortion restrictions.
The debate over two new laws restricting abortion procedures took place via a telephone conference before 9th District Judge Melissa Owens of Teton County. She was ready to set a date to hear arguments on a temporary and emergency ban against two new laws — one established a string of new regulations that forced Wyoming’s only full-service abortion clinic to stop seeing patients two weeks ago — when attorneys for Gov. Mark Gordon objected.
They recently filed a motion asking Owens to transfer the case to Natrona County. That’s where lawyers for abortion providers filed their original suit, along with a request for an emergency hearing and temporary halt to the new regulations, on Feb. 28.
Eleven days after that filing and without any action from the Natrona County court, the doctors and clinics dismissed the case in Casper and refiled it in Teton County.
“This is a case of forum shopping.”
John Woykovsky
Gordon’s attorney, Senior Assistant Attorney General John Woykovsky, claimed the abortion providers, their backers, two doctors and another woman, purposefully refiled in Teton County seeking a friendly judge. Owens has ruled on other litigation challenging Wyoming’s anti-abortion laws, striking down two abortion bans passed in 2023. That case is currently in front of the Wyoming Supreme Court.
Court papers filed by the abortion providers make it clear “that this is a case of forum shopping,” Woykovsky said. “They essentially state that they were dissatisfied with Judge Forgey’s response to their motion for a [temporary restraining order] and hope to obtain a more favorable result in this court.”
Woykovsky made Gordon’s point formally in a motion to change the case’s venue back to Natrona County.
Citing her court’s packed schedule and the issues at hand, Owens set a hearing for Friday, March 21, on Gordon’s change of venue request only.
“The only thing the court can at this point be prepared to hear next Friday with the time we have allotted would be the change of venue hearing,” she said. “So that’s all that we’ll be setting at this point.”
One issue at a time
Lawyers for the providers and doctors argued for an earlier hearing and for one that would consider both the change of venue and an emergency request to block the two new abortion-restricting laws. But Owens didn’t agree to those requests.
The doctors and providers filed the case in Natrona County, site of Casper’s Wellspring Health Access, which provides in-clinic abortions. They refiled the case in Teton County because a doctor in Jackson refers patients to various other clinics and advises patients who seek medical care, including abortions.
“Plaintiffs and their patients are experiencing ongoing, severe, and irreparable injury — including direct harms to Plaintiffs and their patients in Teton County,” the providers said when they dismissed the case in Casper and refiled it in Jackson. “Plaintiffs have no choice but to dismiss the Prior [Natrona County] Action … and re-file it … in the hope of securing a timely hearing.”
At issue are two new abortion-restricting laws. One creates a series of new regulations on abortion clinics in Wyoming by requiring them to be licensed as “ambulatory surgical centers.” The second requires abortion patients to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound and a 48-hour waiting period before receiving abortion medications.
Because of the new laws, Wellspring Health Access, the only clinic in Wyoming that provides in-clinic abortions, said it has stopped performing abortions. It had performed 71 abortions between the start of the year and Feb. 27. In the five days after the laws went into effect, it referred 56 patients to other clinics for abortion-related services, almost all of them out of state, according to court papers.
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