Wyoming Republicans' anti-abortion bill inadvertently targets chemotherapy and surgeries

Senate File 125 could limit access to any treatment that ‘causes harm’ to the heart, lungs, brain and other organs

Cy Neff
Sun 2 Feb 2025 11.00 EST

In an effort to restrict abortion access, Wyoming Republicans authored a bill that could choke access to a host of life-saving medical procedures, from chemotherapy to heart surgery.

State judge Melissa Owens overturned Wyoming’s abortion bans in November 2024, citing the state’s constitutionally guaranteed right to healthcare. The Republican state senator Cheri Steinmetz and the bill’s eight co-sponsors took issue with the ruling, and sought to draw up a definition of healthcare that excludes abortion.

“The intent of [Senate File] 125 is to do no harm and go back to that Hippocratic oath and look at healthcare through that lens,” Steinmeitz told the Guardian.

Steinmetz says Senate File 125 offers a new definition of healthcare in Wyoming: “No act, treatment or procedure that causes harm to the heart, respiratory system, central nervous system, brain, skeletal system, jointed or muscled appendages or organ function shall be construed as healthcare.”

The bill carves out exceptions – for example, when such a procedure is required to save the life of a pregnant woman, or if “a person has no chance of meaningful recovery” without it. Fetal personhood is still on the books in Wyoming from 2023’s overturned “Life Is a Human Right Act”, but experts interviewed said that the murkiness of the bill’s language made it unclear if it would succeed at restricting abortion access – its intended purpose.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/02/wyoming-republicans-anti-abortion-bill