A judge has blocked Wyoming’s first-in-the-nation ban on abortion pills before it was set to be implemented July 1. While several states have banned abortion outright or restricted access to abortion pills, Wyoming in March became the first state with an explicit ban on abortion pills. Teton County Judge Melissa Owens issued the ruling after hearing arguments Thursday for and against allowing the ban to take effect pending the outcome of a lawsuit challenging the new law. The ban would limit services at two Wyoming clinics including one that opened in Casper in April. Owens has now blocked three abortion bans signed into law by the Republican governor who appointed her.
Abortion pills will remain legal in Wyoming for now, after a judge ruled Thursday that the state’s first-in-the-nation law to ban them won’t take effect July 1 as planned while a lawsuit proceeds.
Attorneys for Wyoming failed to show that the ban wouldn’t harm the plaintiffs before their lawsuit is resolved, Teton County Judge Melissa Owens ruled after hearing arguments from both sides. Meanwhile, those plaintiffs “have clearly showed probable success on the merits,” Owens said.
While other states have instituted de facto bans on the medication by broadly prohibiting abortion, only Wyoming has specifically banned abortion pills. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in April that access to one of the two pills, mifepristone, may continue while litigants seek to overturn the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of it.
Wyoming’s pill ban is being challenged by four women, including two obstetricians, and two nonprofit organizations. One of the groups, Wellspring Health Access, opened as the state’s first full-service abortion clinic in years in April following an arson attack in 2022.
