The Wyoming Legislature keeps baking cakes with sand, and when the cakes come out of the oven gritty and tasting like dirt, they blame the oven.
In 2025, the legislature passed three abortion bills: one requiring abortions be performed in ambulatory surgery centers; one requiring an ultrasound and two-day waiting period before the abortion pill could be prescribed; and one allowing off-label drug prescriptions for any purpose — except inducing an abortion.
The first bill requires the abortion to be performed in a licensed health care facility, the second bill requires the use of a health care device to attempt to locate and photograph the fetus, and the third bill restricts licensed health care providers from prescribing off-label drugs to induce an abortion.
All of this for a procedure the legislature has defined as not being health care.
Judge Thomas Campbell issued a summary judgment last week finding the three laws unconstitutional and striking them down.
State House Speaker Chip Neiman, and others, without one scintilla of introspection, complained that “a retired judge has legislated from the bench, doubling down on the barbaric idea that abortion is healthcare. It is not.”
Passing three bills regulating abortion through health care providers, and then redefining abortion as not health care, creates an irony as thick as road tar on a hot day.
In 2012, the voters of Wyoming passed a state constitutional amendment reserving health care decisions to each individual, not the state.
The amendment, Article 1, Section 38 says, “Each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions.”
A subsection adds that, “The legislature may determine reasonable and necessary restrictions on the rights granted under this section to protect the health and general welfare of the people or to accomplish the other purposes set forth in the Wyoming Constitution.”
That language has to mean something.
Wyoming courts have consistently held that this Healthcare Freedom Amendment creates a fundamental right to make personal health care decisions. And the Wyoming Supreme Court said in January that abortion is among those.
The legislature continues to pass unconstitutional bills and then complain about the courts.
Lawmakers’ behavior is akin to baking cakes with sand and then complaining about the oven.
In January 2025, I said the abortion bills were mostly political theater — designed to create election issues; not a serious attempt to outlaw abortion.
“If these legislators really wanted to address the abortion issue, they would simply propose a constitutional amendment prohibiting abortion and let the voters of Wyoming decide the issue,” I wrote at the time.
The Legislature did not trust the voters. Lawmakers did not advance a constitutional amendment or undertake more than one highly superficial effort to do so.
The Legislature knew the law. But the majority ignored it. The majority of the Legislature passed a series of unconstitutional abortion bills instead. And the courts struck them down.
Now predictably, lawmakers excuse their passage of bad bills on “activist judges.”
The fix is simple. Pass a proposed constitutional amendment. I'll draft it for them: Article I, §38 is amended to add subsection (e): Abortion is not healthcare for purposes of this Article.
Stupidity is a defense, but it has its limits.
Four years of passing the same unconstitutional pattern stretches the defense past the breaking point.
Maybe this insane behavior is evidence of something more nefarious. Repeatedly passing clearly unconstitutional abortion bills, after repeated admonitions not to do so, is evidence that the proponents are not serious about prohibiting abortions at all.
If they were serious, they’d be doing everything in their power to prevent abortion, including a constitutional amendment and working to get it passed.
One wonders if the Legislature is purposely passing unconstitutional bills?
Are they purposely creating situations where they can criticize the courts? Do they want to remake the court system in their own image? Do they want to turn the courts into political body where who you are is more important than the rule of law?
In other words, do they want to create system of activist judges in their own image? Do they want to create a system where those who are politically connected get their brand of justice, and everyone else is left out in the cold?
Could passing a series of bills they know to be unconstitutional give them the tools and the manufactured outrage to restrict our constitutional rights by changing the court system?
Beware of the government official who vows to protect you.
When a candidate on the campaign trail starts complaining about activist judges, and the need to run our court officials through a political litmus test, make sure you ask they why they did not, over the last four years, propose a constitutional amendment to limit abortions.
If you get a tap dance, it is because they do not trust the voters, and they want to reshape the government in their own image; including the court system.
We deserve a legislature that is serious about addressing the issues of the day, not covering up their own incompetence by blaming others.
Tom Lubnau served in the Wyoming Legislature from 2004 to 2015 and is a former Speaker of the House. He can be reached at: YourInputAppreciated@gmail.com
