Wyoming lawmakers have advanced two bills that some say could help fill maternal care gaps.
Protecting pregnancy centers
The first, HB 3, would protect pregnancy centers from government regulation. Similar legislation has failed to move forward in the past.
These centers, also known as “crisis pregnancy centers,” are often faith-based and provide free pregnancy tests and counseling to pregnant people.
They say they provide resources to women to help them keep their babies, as well as adoption information, rather than providing abortions.
Supporters say the centers provide critical support to women and babies. But states such as Colorado have chosen to regulate them by making it illegal to provide “deceptive trade practices relating to access to timely abortion and emergency contraceptives,” as well as banning “medication abortion reversal.”
Abortion reversal, the practice of taking a dose of progesterone to halt a medication abortion, is not supported by science, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, though pregnancy centers continue to assert the practice is safe.
The Colorado law made prescribing drugs in this way “unprofessional conduct,” unless several state medical agencies accept the practice. The Colorado law has since been blocked by a federal judge for violating religious liberty.
In Wyoming, pregnancy centers aren’t being regulated yet, where the majority of lawmakers have repeatedly passed legislation restricting access to abortion.
“The best way to do law is to have it in effect before it’s needed,” said Nathan Winters, the former lawmaker and Wyoming Family Alliance leader who spoke in a Feb. 11 committee meeting on the bill.
Much of Wyoming’s legislation restricting abortion has been struck down or held up in courts.
Others, such as Cheyenne Women’s Clinic OB-GYN Rene Hinkle, expressed concerns that the centers don’t follow the same guidance as other medical care facilities, like privacy protections, although leaders of the centers denied this.
Hinkle also said the protections for pregnancy centers should be expanded to other types of medical facilities.
“If we're going to have some protections for certain facilities, we should have those same protections for all facilities,” she said.
An amendment to expand protections failed among lawmakers, who voted 6-3 to introduce the bill to the House floor.
Medicaid coverage for birth centers
The other bill, HB 4, relates to a different kind of center: birth centers. Several of these centers, where midwives perform low-risk deliveries, are popping up across the state to fill maternal care gaps. They offer a delivery option that’s in between having a baby in a hospital and having one at home.
But the owners of these centers say they’ve been facing high upfront costs. That’s because Medicaid is currently not reimbursing them for facility and administrative fees, so owners are footing the bill.
“We're basically eating $4,000 to $5,000 per [Medicaid] client,” Sarah Morey, co-founder of Earthside Birth and Wellness Center in Cheyenne, previously told Wyoming Public Radio.
Committee lawmakers voted 8-1 to make it so Medicaid has to reimburse birth centers for some of those costs.
Both bills are now headed to the House for a vote.
