Abortion in Wyoming

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Abortion in Wyoming is currently legal due to a temporary court injunction.^[1]

After the U.S. Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade on June 24, 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, abortion ceased to be a federally protected right.

On March 15, 2022, Wyoming's legislature passed HB92, a trigger law that would ban abortion beginning five days after the overturn of Roe v. Wade.^[2] Under HB92, abortion is illegal except for cases of rape, incest (reported to law enforcement) and serious risk of death or "substantial and irreversible physical impairments" for the pregnant woman.^[3]

On March 17, 2023, Governor Mark Gordon signed a law banning abortion pills, becoming the first state in the country to do so.^[4]

Abortion was a criminal offence in Wyoming in 1950. Less-restrictive abortion legislation was introduced in 1997 but not passed. In 2013, a fetal heartbeat bill was introduced in the Wyoming House of Representatives but never made it out of committee. In January 2017, a mandatory ultrasound law went into effect, however, it lacked an enforcement mechanism.

The number of abortion clinics in the state has been on the decline since the late 20th century, going from eight in 1982 to five in 1992 to one in 2014, and remaining at that total in 2016, 2017 and 2019.  At the same time, a few medical facilities in the state have quietly offered abortion services to women. In 2017, 140 abortions took place in the state, representing nearly 0.0% of all such procedures in the US that year.^[5] Some Wyomingites participated in Stop the Bans rallies in May 2019 to advocate for women's right to abortion.^[6]