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After Roe v. Wade was overturned, Wyoming tried to ban most abortions. Those bans have been blocked by lawsuits. And last week, a state judge ruled against the bans. The judge's reasoning rested almost entirely on language that Republicans added to the state Constitution about a decade ago. Wyoming Public Radio's Hanna Merzbach explains.
HANNA MERZBACH, BYLINE: For the past 11 months, state judge Melissa Owens has been weighing if Wyoming's abortion bans are constitutional. Last week, she ruled they weren't. Dr. Giovannina Anthony is a woman's health provider based in Jackson.
GIOVANNINA ANTHONY: It certainly is further inspiration to continue the fight.
MERZBACH: She was one of several advocates who sued the state to block its two abortion laws.
ANTHONY: I just feel this wave of relief washing over me as I think about the women of the state and other states who are continuing to fight for their rights.
MERZBACH: The basis for Judge Owens' argument goes back over a decade.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JIM ANDERSON: Senate will come to order.
MERZBACH: In 2011, Wyoming lawmakers gathered on the Senate floor to talk about changing the state's Constitution to oppose the Affordable Care Act. Their conversation didn't have much to do with abortion.
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DREW PERKINS: There's four paragraphs. First one is each competent adults have the right to make his or own her health care decisions.
MERZBACH: That's Senator Drew Perkins advocating for the amendment. Republicans didn't like the tax penalty people faced at the time for not having insurance.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PERKINS: And that's what this is about, my fellow senators, I think, is about choice about whether you're going to free choose it, whether you're free not to choose it.
MERZBACH: The federal penalty, if you don't have health insurance, was eventually thrown out, but not before Wyoming voters approved the amendment. It explicitly laid out residents' rights to make health care decisions. The same happened in a handful of other states, such as Arizona and Oklahoma. That's according to Mary Ziegler, a historian and law professor at the University of California.
MARY ZIEGLER: Just sort of, like, a messaging bill - right? - where Republicans were using it to signal disapproval of the Affordable Care Act.
MERZBACH: But Ziegler says that Wyoming's amendment has come back to bite Republicans who now want to ban abortion. In her ruling, Judge Owens said the abortion bans violate the right to make health care decisions for an entire class of people - those who are pregnant. Ziegler says this is the first time a judge has used this legal logic. Other states are using different parts of their constitutions to protect abortion rights.
ZIEGLER: Addressing due process or equal protection or the right to life or bodily integrity.
MERZBACH: In Wyoming, a key part of Judge Owens' ruling was that abortion is, in fact, health care, according to dictionary definitions and medical associations. But the state of Wyoming and antiabortion groups disagree.
MARTI HALVERSON: Abortion is not health care.
MERZBACH: Marti Halverson runs the advocacy group Wyoming Right to Life.
HALVERSON: It destroys the two-patient paradigm and allows one patient to be killed and somehow benefiting the other patient.
MERZBACH: The state has now filed to appeal the ruling to the Wyoming Supreme Court. State officials haven't responded to a request for comment, but Governor Mark Gordon said in a press release that he's committed to defending the constitutionality of the laws and the, quote, "sanctity of life." For now, abortion remains legal in Wyoming.
For NPR News, I'm Hanna Merzbach in Jackson. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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