CV NEWS FEED // In an appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court, the state has argued that a district court judge misapplied the law last year when she struck down the “Life is a Human Right Act” and a state law protecting unborn children from chemical abortions, Cowboy State Daily reported Feb. 5.
In November 2024, Teton County District Court Judge Melissa Owens issued a permanent injunction for Johnson v. State of Wyoming blocking the laws, claiming they were “unconstitutional,” CatholicVote previously reported. On Feb. 3, Wyoming Attorney General Special Assistant Jay Jerde filed an appeal to the Supreme Court on behalf of Republican Gov. Mark Gordon, who had signed the two pro-life bills into law in March 2023.
Owens had said in her ruling that abortion is health care, which is a right in the state constitution, according to Cowboy State Daily.
Jerde’s appeal of the decision argued that Owens “misapplied the Wyoming Constitution, used abortion-friendly doctors’ testimony in her decision that should have been rooted in legislative language and history, and tried to resurrect Roe vs. Wade to foist her own preferred results into state law,” Cowboy State Daily reported.
The Wyoming Constitution states that “Each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions.”
According to WyoFile, if the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, this clause, from Article 1 Section 38 of the state Constitution, will be central to the arguments. The full clause was passed by legislators, and later by voters as a constitutional amendment, during former President Barack Obama’s first term following his signing of the Affordable Care Act.
Jerde noted in his appeal that the unborn child is separate from the mother, so an abortion — which kills the child — is not advancing one’s “own” health, according to the Cowboy State Daily. The only way this would be the case is if she had the abortion to protect her own life from serious injury or death, he argued.
“Nothing in the history surrounding the ratification of section 38 even remotely suggests that the Wyoming legislature and the voters intended for section 38 to codify the abortion right … in the Wyoming Constitution,” Jerde also wrote in his appeal, according to WyoFile.
WyoFile reports that Jerde wrote that the legislature has the jurisdiction to regulate abortion since it is not a constitutional right, arguing that Owens’ court “ran roughshod over the doctrine of separation of powers” in declaring the bills “unconstitutional.”
