Gov. Mark Gordon vetoed a bill Friday that says abortion is not health care except in cases of rape or incest or to save a mother’s life.
The Wyoming governor’s decision is significant because the state Supreme Court is preparing to hear a Jackson doctor’s challenge to two 2023 abortion bans. The legal challenge hinges on similar questions: whether abortion is health care and whether the Wyoming Constitution, which guarantees an adult’s right to “make his or her own health care decisions,” guarantees the right to abortion.
In November, Teton County District Court Judge Melissa Owens struck down both bans, saying the laws curtailed pregnant women’s right to make health care decisions. Gordon appealed Owens’ decision, and the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments April 16.
In vetoing Senate File 125, Gordon deferred to Wyoming voters and the Supreme Court. He said that Senate File 125 largely “reiterates and recodifies” the 2023 abortion ban and that the Wyoming Legislature “overstepped its bounds” by trying to prescribe through state statute what health care is — and isn’t. The courts, not legislators, are responsible for interpreting the constitution, Gordon said, adding that signing the bill would extend legal battles and cause confusion.
“My veto will avoid unnecessary delay, prevent even more legal battles, allow for clarity and finality through the Court’s eventual decision, and preserve the precious separation of powers so essential to containing the excesses of government,” Gordon wrote in a letter to Speaker of the House Chip Neiman, who co-sponsored the bill.
If lawmakers want to protect “the unborn,” the governor added, they should wait for the Supreme Court ruling and correct “deficiencies.”
Because the Wyoming Legislature gaveled out March 6, Wyoming lawmakers are now all but unable to override Gordon’s veto.
Gov. Gordon has now split multiple times with the Wyoming Legislature over abortion policy. While he backed a new law that changes how abortion clinics are regulated and would force the only surgical abortion clinic in the state to close, Gordon vetoed a bill that would require women to obtain a transvaginal ultrasound 48 hours prior to a medical abortion, without exceptions for rape or incest.
The Wyoming Legislature overrode that veto. Shortly afterward, Wellspring Health Access, the first abortion clinic in Casper and the only procedural and medical abortion clinic in Wyoming, sued the state over the two new laws, asking Judge Owens to rule on the case.
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