CHEYENNE, Wyo.—Just in time for Women’s History Month, Wyoming’s Republican-dominated legislature has passed a six-week abortion ban. Gov. Mark Gordon signed the bill into law while warning his GOP colleagues that there would most likely be legal pushback to the legislation. The bill makes abortion illegal after six weeks of pregnancy. Those found violating the law could face a felony punishable by a prison sentence of up to five years.
Wyoming, with its Human Heartbeat Act (HB0126), is now the fifth state to criminalize abortions at this stage of pregnancy, joining Florida, Georgia, Iowa, and South Carolina. The argument behind the laws is that at six weeks, doctors are able to hear a “heartbeat” from the embryo and therefore it should not be aborted.
The state’s law is part of a growing trend of conservative-led states utilizing the Supreme Court’s striking down of the historic Roe v. Wade decision to place more restrictions on the reproductive rights of women. Thirteen other states, such as Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi, have banned abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with few exceptions.
The six-week abortion bans—pushed as “fetal heartbeat” bills by anti-abortion backers— have come under continued criticism and condemnation by reproductive rights advocates and medical professionals. They assert that at six weeks, many individuals don’t even know they are pregnant or what medical concerns might be taken into consideration for the woman’s health. They’ve also pushed back against the terminology and rhetoric used by those who push anti-abortion legislation, as it often has no real basis in science or medicine.
As Planned Parenthood has stated, “fetal heartbeat” is “a manipulative term deployed to justify banning abortion early in pregnancy, in what is close to a complete ban on abortion… Because they place false images in people’s minds—false images meant to make people view common and accepted health care as immoral and shameful… In truth, the ‘fetal heartbeat’ talking point is misinformation intended to deceive the press and public.”
The idea of the six-week abortion ban first gained traction in 2011 through the conservative Christian group Faith2Action, which credits itself as the “birthplace of the heartbeat bill.” The organization’s website features model legislation for like-minded politicians to duplicate in their states. Its leader and founder, Janet Porter, has gone on record saying that life begins at conception and that homosexuality is a choice. She was also the architect for the infamous 1990s “gay conversion” campaign.
In a social media post, Gov. Gordon stated that he expected the bill to face opposition on constitutional grounds. This is in reference to the overturning of other abortion bans by the Wyoming Supreme Court earlier this year on the grounds of the state’s constitutional guarantee that adults can make their own healthcare decisions. The court ruled that those earlier laws criminalizing abortion violated the state’s “healthcare freedom” amendment.
After that ruling, Gordon called for an amendment to the state’s constitution on the definition of healthcare, but the maneuver failed to gain much traction.
On the newly signed HB0126, the Republican governor stated that the “well-intentioned” but “fragile” law “very likely puts us back in the all too familiar and unfortunate territory of pro-life litigation.”
“Rather than finding a remedy that saves the unborn, I fear we have only added another chapter to the sad saga of repeatedly trying to force a specific solution,” Gordon said.
The anti-abortion group Wyoming Family Alliance supported the bill, calling it “a huge win for life” and saying they “believe every unborn child deserves protection from the moment of conception, and we will keep working until abortion becomes unthinkable in Wyoming. Today, we celebrate a major step toward that goal.”
There was no mention in the group’s Facebook statement about the lives and health of individuals who find themselves pregnant. But health care advocates are pushing back on Gordon’s “solution,” calling it an attack on freedom of choice.
Julie Burkhart, president of Wellspring Health Access—the state’s only clinic still offering abortion procedures and abortion by medication—said in a statement that her organization is prepared to challenge the new ban in court.
“With so many across Wyoming already struggling to access reproductive healthcare, restrictive policies like these take us further in the wrong direction. This ban is an attack on Wyomingites’ constitutional freedom to make their own health care decisions, and it puts the health and well-being of our communities at risk,” she said to the press.
On March 10, Burkhart’s organization helped in submitting a court filing seeking to block the state’s new law.
The filing states that the new law “transgresses the constitutional guarantee” of individuals’ ability “to make healthcare decisions without interference from the government.” It asserts that the ambiguity around a “detectable” heartbeat will make it so that healthcare providers will be hesitant to provide proper abortion care at any stage for patients in need.
“We are prepared to challenge this ban in court and fight to protect reproductive rights, health, and freedom in Wyoming,” Burkhart said in her statement. “We will also continue to work with our regional and national partners, including clinics, abortion funds, and practical support groups, to help our patients access the care they need.”
Wyoming may be remembered this Women’s History Month as the first state to sign the country’s first-ever legislation granting women full voting rights and the right to hold public office in 1869, but its current state of affairs seemingly shows a different attitude regarding the rights of women when it comes to health care and bodily autonomy.
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