CHEYENNE - Changing the Wyoming Constitution can be a dangerous venture. It should be approached carefully. On tiptoes.
This is true of a constitutional amendment on health care rights that passed the Legislature in 2011 and which the voters approved in the 2012 general election.
It is now Article 1 Section 38 of the Wyoming Constitution.
During the 2011 session, the majority Republicans were incensed by the acceptance by the courts of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare as they called it.
The Republicans promised they would create an alternate Wyoming health insurance program. They tried to create a health insurance exchange without success, largely because Wyoming has such a small population.
The Republicans said Obamacare was an example of government overreach because it required people to have health insurance.
The constitutional amendment gave citizens the right not to participate in a specific health care system and rather, to pay for health care services themselves.
As I wrote in 2011, the majority Republicans at that time were incensed by the success of Obamacare in some courts.
There were in bills to outlaw Obamacare outright which did not make the cut because they were unconstitutional.
The main opposition to Obamacare came from lawmakers who were tea party followers, the ideological forerunner of the Freedom Caucus.
There were three or more versions of the health care constitutional amendment introduced, but Senate Resolution 2 made it through.
In July 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court, to the surprise and dismay of many Republicans, voted 5-4 to uphold Obamacare.
Chief Justice John Roberts cast the key vote in a break from the more conservative bloc.
So here we are now.
The Freedom Caucus, now in control of the Wyoming House and half the Senate, has had enough clout to move through its hard right-wing agenda, including multiple measures to ban or discourage abortion.
I would bet that the 2011 class of lawmakers had no idea that the amendment they passed would be used to protect abortion rights more than 10 years later.
Section 38 opened the door for a person to claim that their health care decisions are protected by the Wyoming Constitution.
The lawsuits challenging abortion have been filed.
In Wyoming there are two judges who have concluded that the 2012 state constitutional amendment — the right of competent adults to make their own health care decisions - applies to abortion.
One of these cases is now pending in the Wyoming Supreme Court.
Unfortunately, the hard-right activists are attacking the judges, who are simply following the law as the legislators wrote it.
They are talking about judicial reform.
Actually we had that in the1970s when the voters opted to swap the system of electing judges for the new reform system which came from Missouri.
The aim was to get politics out of the judiciary.
Now we just vote to keep judges in office or not. The judges are not allowed to campaign except under extraordinary circumstances, which has happened only once in my memory.
The caucus folks are playing dirty pool —a big dollop of grandstanding here.
They should be attacking the lawmakers who passed Senate Resolution 2 in 2011; or all the voters who embraced it in November’s 2012.
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Contact Joan Barron at 307-632-2534 or jmbarron@bresnan.net
