Casper abortion clinic remains in limbo as judge mulls temporary halt to new regulations
FROM WYOFILE:
Attorneys for Wyoming abortion providers want laws paused while case proceeds. State lawyers say new rules should remain in effect.
The five-week pause on abortions at Wellspring Health Access will continue for now.
A judge heard arguments Tuesday on whether to temporarily halt enforcement of new state regulations that forced the Casper clinic to stop providing abortions in late February. But at the hearing’s conclusion, state Judge Thomas Campbell said he would issue a forthcoming written decision rather than ruling from the bench.
In the meantime, Wellspring will continue to refer patients seeking abortions to out-of-state providers, while continuing to serve patients seeking non-abortion care, its founder said after the hearing.
“We are committed to seeing this through,” Wellspring president Julie Burkhart told reporters.
Burkhart’s attorneys and state lawyers defending the new regulations spent Tuesday afternoon inside a Casper courtroom debating whether Campbell should grant a preliminary injunction that would pause enforcement of the rules while a legal challenge proceeds.
At issue are two laws passed earlier this year by the Wyoming Legislature. One requires abortion clinics to be regulated as ambulatory surgical centers, a designation that brings with it more strenuous rules and restrictions. The second mandates pregnant women undergo ultrasounds and a 48-hour waiting period before receiving abortion medications.
Unnecessary regulations?
Attorneys representing Burkhart and other abortion advocates maintain the new laws are unconstitutional and nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt at halting abortion altogether after a separate judge blocked Wyoming’s two existing abortion bans in November. They maintain the new laws unfairly target Wellspring and won’t make women seeking abortions any safer.
“At the end of the day, the state has done nothing to show these laws protect women’s health,” said Peter Modlin, one of several attorneys representing the plaintiffs at Tuesday’s hearing.
Modlin questioned why a clinic that provides abortions should be regulated as an ambulatory surgical center when its procedures don’t involve things like incisions or anesthesia. He noted that lawmakers don’t require the ambulatory surgical center designation for clinics that provide more invasive procedures like vasectomies.
“On its face, the law doesn’t make sense if its purpose is to protect public health,” he told the court.
Turning to the ultrasound law, Modlin questioned why the new mandate was necessary. If an ultrasound requirement was truly about keeping pregnant women safe, then why only require it for women seeking abortions, he asked.
The lawyer also cited comments made by Wyoming Speaker of the House Chip Neiman, who has acknowledged that his push to pass new abortion restrictions is focused on ending the practice, rather than merely making it safer.
Whatever Neiman’s intent, the laws he supported have dramatically halted abortion in Wyoming. Wellspring performed 71 abortions between Jan. 1 and Feb. 27, when the new ambulatory surgical center regulations went into effect. In the month that followed, it stopped providing abortions and referred 80 patients seeking them to other providers.
“This law is carefully tailored to put that one clinic out of business,” Modlin said.
Defending the laws
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion rights advocates in Wyoming have focused on a 2012 amendment to the Wyoming Constitution that protects people’s rights to make their own health care decisions. Lawyers for abortion providers successfully used that amendment to convince a different judge to overturn the abortion bans passed by the Wyoming Legislature in 2023. That case is set to be argued before the Wyoming Supreme Court next week.
On Tuesday, Senior Assistant Attorney General John Woykovsky took aim at those arguments. The state maintains abortion does not qualify as health care in the context of the constitutional amendment. And regardless, that amendment still allows the Wyoming Legislature to enact restrictions related to health care, he said.
“There is no fundamental right to make health care decisions that are unrestricted,” he said.
Beyond that, Woykovsky noted that Wellspring, while saying the new rules are too onerous, hasn’t provided details about how much it would cost to upgrade the facility to comply with them.
“All we know is Wellspring has stated they are not willing to try,” he said.
What’s next?
Abortion opponents packed one side of the courtroom for the hearing, and as it wound down, Judge Campbell appeared to acknowledge that many in Wyoming were awaiting his ruling. He said he would try to work as quickly as possible to produce a written opinion.
The case took a circuitous route to even get to this point. Before lawyers had a chance to argue the merits, they clashed over where the case should be heard. The plaintiffs first filed their suit on Feb. 28 in Natrona County. But when Natrona County District Judge Dan Forgey did not act on their request for an emergency hearing after 12 days, the plaintiffs refiled the matter in Teton County, where it was assigned to Melissa Owens, the same judge who struck down the 2023 abortion bans.
Attorneys defending the abortion restrictions fought the venue change, saying it amounted to forum shopping. Owens agreed the case belonged in Natrona County and sent it back there. But instead of going back to Forgey, the case was assigned without public explanation to Campbell.
While the rules remain in effect, Wellspring is providing medical services that don’t involve abortion, including family planning and general gynecological services, Burkhart told reporters after the hearing. She said she didn’t know how long the clinic could continue to operate without its full slate of services. Wellspring has three doctors and seven other clinical staff, and to date, hasn’t laid anyone off.
In the meantime, the clinic has referred patients to facilities in Colorado, Salt Lake City and Montana. If Campbell grants the preliminary injunction, Wellspring would immediately restart its abortion services, Burkhart said.
“We are a pretty tenacious group of people,” she said. “We are not going to shrink from this.”
WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
This story was posted on April 8, 2025.