Wyoming's new six-week abortion ban prompts lawsuit
Source: The Guardian
Sun 15 Mar 2026 09.57 EDT
First published on Sun 15 Mar 2026 07.00 EDT
Wyoming’s Republican-dominated legislature passed a six-week abortion ban this week, prompting a new lawsuit and some lawmakers to call it “an insult to voters and our institution”.
Mark Gordon, Wyoming’s governor, signed the bill while simultaneously warning of its constitutional hurdles, noting that prior abortion bans were struck down by the state’s all Republican-appointed supreme court this January. Almost immediately, an identical set of plaintiffs filed suit against the new bill.
This bill effectively makes abortion illegal after six weeks of pregnancy, a time when many women have not yet learned that they are pregnant. Any person violating the law would face a felony punishable by prison sentence of up to five years. Earlier abortion bans, including the US’s first proposed ban on abortion pills, were previously tossed out by the Wyoming supreme court – which cited Wyoming’s constitutional guarantee that adults can make their own healthcare decisions.
Democratic representative Mike Yin views this now annual cycle of abortion bans as “both an insult to voters and our institution”, and doesn’t think the new bill holds much water. Yin said: “I don’t see why the court would see this ban any different than a full ban.” The bill’s main sponsor, Republican speaker of the house Chip Neiman, said on the house floor that he was not troubled by the bill’s legal complications. Instead, he argued that legislators had a moral obligation to further anti-abortion legislation.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/15/abortion-wyoming-supreme-court
REFERENCE - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143619338
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