Teton County’s district court has denied hearing a lawsuit seeking to block two new abortion laws recently passed by the state legislature.
Judge Melissa Owens said she wouldn’t consider the case since patients have been turned away from care at Wellspring Health Access in Natrona County — even though at least three of them were residents of Teton County.
Christine Lichtenfels, who leads advocacy group Chelsea’s Fund, was disappointed by the decision.
“People’s lives are being affected every day,” she told Wyoming Public Radio.
Wellspring Health Access is the state’s only clinic offering procedural abortions. It hasn’t been able to serve patients since one of the new laws, previously known as HB 42, imposed stringent regulations on the clinic and required renovations.
According to Marci Bramlet, a lawyer representing the clinic and other abortion access advocates, at least 40 Wyomingites have been turned away from services. Dozens more have been turned away from neighboring states.
The suit was also challenging another new law, formerly HB 64, which requires pregnant people to get a transvaginal ultrasound within 48 hours before getting a medical abortion.
This law applies to Teton County’s abortion provider at St. John’s Health and the online provider Just the Pill, along with Wellspring.
Abortion access advocates first filed the lawsuit in Natrona County, then asked to move it, since they say the court didn’t hear it quickly enough, and Teton County has heard past abortion cases.
Senior Assistant Attorney General John J. Woykovsky said Natrona County is the only proper place to file this lawsuit. In a brief, he cited a source referring to this move as “judge shopping” to get a better result and pushed the court to deny the request.
Judge Owens has been ruling in the group’s favor for years, most recently deciding the state’s near-total abortion bans — enacted in 2023 — are unconstitutional. A separate case considering those bans will be heard in the Wyoming Supreme Court on April 16 at 1:30 p.m. in Cheyenne.
When it comes to the new lawsuit, Lichtenfels said the group is still deciding what to do next, but that may mean refiling the case in Natrona County.
“We will continue to take action,” she said.
