Editor's Note: This story has been updated to clarify that Thomas T.C. Campbell is a retired judge. Natrona County assigned him the case.

A judge in Natrona County heard a case on April 8 attempting to block two new state abortion laws.

One has prevented the state’s only procedural abortion clinic in Casper from ending pregnancies, forcing about 100 patients to seek care elsewhere.

Another law requires women to get transvaginal ultrasounds two days before taking abortion pills.

Abortion advocates asked for the laws to be temporarily halted, arguing they aren’t based on medical evidence and violate the state constitution, which gives Wyomingites the right to make their own healthcare decisions.

“Women no longer have the ability to choose to have a procedural abortion,” the plaintiffs’ lawyer, John Robinson, said. “If that hasn’t affected the right to make their own healthcare decisions, I don’t know what has.”

The state, however, defended the laws, saying abortion is not health care and lawmakers can regulate it. Senior Assistant Attorney General John J. Woykovsky defended the ultrasound law as a type of “informed consent.”

“Before a woman obtains a chemical abortion, she should have full information,” Woykovsky said. “And part of that information is an ability to visualize the fetus and the ability to hear the heartbeat.”

In their brief, abortion supporters argued that in the first trimester, there is no heartbeat, because the heart organ hasn’t been formed yet. They said what is heard during an ultrasound is actually “electrical activity of proto-cardiac muscular tissue in the fetus.”

But according to Woykovsky, “if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s a duck. It’s a heartbeat.”

Judge Thomas T.C. Campbell, who retired last year and was brought in for this case, didn’t rule from the bench. He said he would decide whether to temporarily block the laws as soon as possible.

“Courts do not rule from the bench in these circumstances,” Campbell said. “A written opinion on the injunction will be entered with justification to some degree one way or the other.”

In previous abortion lawsuits seeking injunctions in Teton County, Judge Melissa Owens has ruled from the bench several times. The plaintiffs attempted to take this case to Owens as well, saying Natrona County wasn’t getting to it fast enough, but she denied to hear it.

Abortion will be in the courts again Wednesday, April 16 at 1:30 p.m, when the Wyoming Supreme Court will hear another case challenging the state’s near-total abortion bans.

Abortion remains legal in Wyoming, but access is currently restricted.