by Maggie Mullen, WyoFile
CHEYENNE—Following the House’s lead, the Wyoming Senate voted Wednesday to override Gov. Mark Gordon’s veto of a bill that requires patients seeking abortion medications to first undergo a transvaginal ultrasound and a 48-hour waiting period.
The bill will go into effect immediately.
Gordon vetoed House Bill 64, “Chemical abortions-ultrasound requirement,” Monday night, citing concerns over the bill’s invasive nature and its lack of exceptions for victims of rape and incest.
A transvaginal ultrasound uses a wand-like device inserted into a woman’s vagina to detect a fetus.
“Every year we continue to lose unborn babies in Wyoming,” Gordon wrote in his veto letter. “Making it easier for mothers to have babies in Wyoming and supporting them afterward is a far better course. Mandating this intimate, personally invasive, and often medically unnecessary procedure goes too far.”
Veto overrides require a two-thirds vote. The House voted 45-16 Tuesday to override Gordon’s veto before the Senate did so Wednesday in a 22-9 vote.
Neither override vote was identical to the final votes on the bill before the measure was sent to Gordon. Several more lawmakers voted against the bill in both the House and the Senate when it came time to override Gordon’s veto.
Evanston Republican Sen. Wendy Schuler voted for the bill on third reading but against overriding the governor. Like Gordon, Schuler said she struggled with the bill because of its implications for survivors of childhood sexual abuse and victims whose pregnancy is caused by rape or incest.
“Having taught for a lot of years, I actually had a couple students in this situation,” Schuler said. “The decisions weren’t made by them. They were made by their parents. But if they would have had to have gone through what we’re asking them to do right now and be retraumatized, revictimized, I would feel really bad about that.”
Sen. Gary Crum, R-Laramie, had previously brought an unsuccessful amendment to waive the transvaginal ultrasound requirement “unless expressly requested by the pregnant woman.”
Without such an amendment, the bill was flawed, Crum said.
“I’m going to be for the override, but this bill needs some work,” he said.
Buffalo Republican Sen. Barry Crago also voted for the veto override, but expressed concerns from a legal perspective.
Wyoming’s two 2023 abortion bans — both of which Crago voted for — are currently held up in court, awaiting a state Supreme Court decision after a Teton County District Court judge ruled they were unconstitutional in November.
“If all we’re doing is making it so the court case lasts another two years, we are not doing our job,” Crago said.
Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, said he felt supporters of the bill had shifted the debate Wednesday.
“This bill is supposed to be about women’s health, and none of the debate just now really focused on women’s health,” Rothfuss said.
Instead, Rothfuss said, the debate indicated the bill was really about something else.
“So what we know is that right now, abortion is legal in Wyoming. And this is trying to find an end run, to recognize, ‘All right, well, if it’s legal, then let’s make it difficult, let’s make it painful, let’s make it traumatic, let’s make it harrowing.’ Then we can accomplish the same objectives without actually having to illegalize it,” Rothfuss said.
Speaker of the House Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, was the ultrasound bill’s main sponsor. Earlier in the session, he said the legislation was needed to keep patients safe while abortion remains legal, while also pointing to a desire to prevent abortion.
“I do, I absolutely believe life is precious. That we should do everything that we possibly can to protect it,” Neiman said on the House floor.
Hours after Gordon signed a separate bill last Thursday to enact several regulations on clinics that perform abortions, the state’s one facility to do so — Casper’s Wellspring Health Access — challenged the law in court.
Wellspring preemptively aimed part of that complaint at the ultrasound regulation and asked a judge to hold an emergency hearing as soon as possible. At publishing time, the hearing had not yet happened.
This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
