Cheyenne, Wyol (AP) -Wyoming’s only abortion clinic from Wyoming stopped the abortion abortions on Friday, but after Governor Mark Gordon had approved a law, according to which such institutions had to be licensed as surgical centers.
The clinic will continue to be occupied and continue to call the patients and at the same time question the new law in court, said Julie Burkhart, President of the Wellspring Health Access.
“We want to make sure that we navigate this process appropriately,” said Burkhart and added that the clinic “did not leave any people”.
The Casper Clinic will neither provide surgical nor medication abortions while applying for a court decision -making saving that blocks the new law, said Burkhart.
Wellspring filed a lawsuit on Friday to question the new law before the Natrona district court. The Gordon spokesman Michael Pearlman, who quoted politics in order not to comment on matters that affect pending legal disputes, said on Friday that the Republican governor would not receive a comment on the bill signed behind schedule Thursday.
The law came into force immediately. It is the youngest under a state bans and other restrictions on abortion, complaints that question the measures, and the voter initiatives, the abortion have been involved, since the Supreme Court of the USA Roe v. Wade lifted in 2022.
Many new laws are classified by supporters of abortion access requests as “targeted regulation of the abortion provider” or the trap of the laws.
Twenty-four states, including 16, which do not have a complete prohibition of abortion, have now passed the Wyoming measures in which abortion clinics are on licensed surgical centers, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.
In Wyoming, the abortion has remained legal, while a previous lawsuit by Wellspring and others who submitted the state bans adopted in 2022 and 2023 in front of the Supreme Court of Wyoming were submitted.
In November, a judge in Wyoming State District, who previously put Wyoming’s abortion laws into force, decided that these bans – both for surgical abortion and the first explicit ban of abortion pills – violated the state constitution.
The district judge of Teton County, Melissa Owens, quoted a state constitutional change that says that competent adults have the right to make their own health decisions. The voters approved the change in 2012 in response to concerns regarding their rights within the framework of the Affordable Care Act, which expanded health insurance across the country.
Gordon’s office appealed against the judge’s judgment at the state’s Supreme Court.
Wyoming’s latest abortion law obliges that clinics that licensed surgical abortions as outpatient surgery centers are licensed. In the meantime, surgical abortions may only be provided by licensed doctors, although the privileges in a hospital are no more than 16 kilometers away.
Although Wellspring is three blocks from one of the most significant hospitals from Wyoming, Wellspring has argued that the legislative proposal would require costly renovation work to his clinic. Wellspring opened in 2023 after almost a year of work to repair earnest damage from an arson attack.
In the meantime, the attempts by the Wyoming legislator to prohibit and regulate abortion have come again and again. This includes six bills this year alone.
“As long as the abortion in Wyoming remains legal, we are responsible for the security of women who receive abortions,” Republican Rep. Martha Lawley told a legislative committee to support the requirements for surgical licensing in January.
The measure contained “basic pension regulations,” said Lawley.
However, the managing director of Wellspring, Katie Knutter, countered that the American Medical Association opposes such regulations and that abortion is one of the safest medical procedures.
“We believe that this is expressly geared to get us out of business and to restrict health services for people with punitive, adverse measures that increase the costs and restrict the options for health care,” Knutter told the committee.
In 2024, Gordon made against a similar measure, which was to meet the additional provisions of which he said that he will attempt to maintain Wyoming’s prohibition of abortion in court.
A legislative template in which women who are looking for pills have an ultrasound for the first time is waiting for Gordon’s signature after deleting the legislator on Thursday.
