{"id":426040,"date":"2026-01-24T00:42:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T00:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/426040\/"},"modified":"2026-01-24T00:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T00:42:11","slug":"what-the-wyoming-supreme-court-didnt-invent-about-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/426040\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Wyoming Supreme Court didn\u2019t invent about \u2018health care\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

I taught constitutional law at the University of Wyoming in the 1990s. One thing I learned quickly is that Wyomingites don\u2019t have much patience for courts that seem to be inventing rights or words to get the outcome they want. So it\u2019s no surprise that the Wyoming Supreme Court\u2019s recent abortion decision has been greeted by many critics as \u201cjudicial activism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their charge goes like this: The Wyoming Constitution protects each competent adult\u2019s right to make their own \u201chealth care decisions,\u201d but the court simply declared that abortion counts as \u201chealth care,\u201d without any real basis for doing so. Properly understood, the argument continues, \u201chealth care decisions\u201d are about treatments to sustain and restore life, not to end it.<\/p>\n

That criticism misunderstands both what the court did \u2014 and what Wyoming law already says.<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s reasoning was straightforward. The state constitution protects \u201chealth care decisions.\u201d Abortion involves medical judgment about a patient\u2019s body. Therefore, abortion decisions are \u201chealth care decisions.\u201d You may disagree with that conclusion, but it\u2019s not exotic constitutional theory. Courts decide every day whether a particular practice fits within a general legal category. It\u2019s regular business.<\/p>\n

Still, the court\u2019s conclusion is right for another reason \u2014 one the court itself did not emphasize \u2014 and it comes not from moral philosophy, but from existing Wyoming law.<\/p>\n

When a state\u2019s laws use the same phrase in different places, courts generally assume it means the same thing each time. (There\u2019s a fancy Latin phrase for this, but I\u2019ll spare you.) Otherwise, a legislature would be free to sprinkle words around the statute books and leave courts and citizens guessing which definition applies where.<\/p>\n

So if critics insist that \u201chealth care\u201d means only treatment designed to sustain life or restore physical health, the obvious question is: Does Wyoming law actually use the term that way?<\/p>\n

The answer is no.<\/p>\n

Consider the \u201cProvider Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment Program Act<\/a>\u201d passed in 2015. That statute repeatedly uses the phrase \u201chealth care\u201d to describe what doctors, nurses and facilities must do when a patient has clearly expressed wishes about end-of-life treatment. And what does the law require? It requires health care providers to honor a patient\u2019s decision not to receive treatment \u2014 even when doing so will hasten death.<\/p>\n

\"\"Community members sit inside the Wyoming Supreme Court before the court hears an the appeal of a district court abortion decision on Wednesday, April 16, 2025, in Cheyenne. Abortion rights advocates wore green in support of Latin America\u2019s Green Wave movement that signifies hope. (Milo Gladstein\/Wyoming Tribune Eagle)<\/p>\n

That is not care aimed at restoring health. It is not care designed to prolong life. Yet Wyoming law says \u201chealth care\u201d providers have to provide it if that\u2019s what the dying patient wants. It specifically uses that term, over and over again: \u201chealth care.\u201d<\/p>\n

This matters because it directly undercuts the state\u2019s argument in the abortion case. If \u201chealth care\u201d in Wyoming law includes respecting a patient\u2019s decision to refuse life-sustaining treatment, then that term cannot plausibly be limited just to interventions that preserve life or cure disease.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Seen in this light, the Wyoming Supreme Court did not invent a definition of \u201chealth care\u201d to reach a preferred result. It applied a definition that Wyoming law has long embraced \u2014 one that treats decisions that relate to dying as much a part of \u201chealth care\u201d as decisions that relate to living.<\/p>\n

My argument might easily be misunderstood. I am not saying that aborting a fetus is the same as caring for a person at the end of life. Not at all. I am saying that the meaning of \u201chealth care\u201d under one provision of Wyoming law is informed by how Wyoming law uses the phrase \u201chealth care\u201d elsewhere.<\/p>\n

People can disagree, in good faith, about abortion policy. But calling this decision \u201cjudicial activism\u201d misses the mark. The court didn\u2019t make the word \u201chealth care\u201d mean something new. It took Wyoming law at its word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I taught constitutional law at the University of Wyoming in the 1990s. One thing I learned quickly is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426041,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":{"0":"post-426040","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426040"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426040\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}