Reporting of abortions in historical perspective

In 1977, only four years after the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Wyoming’s laws governing abortions, Governor Edgar Herschler (D-Kemmerer) signed legislation that required “the reporting of every abortion performed or prescribed in” the state of Wyoming.

Edgar Herschler, Wyoming Governor

The law, while taking care to protect the identity of the mother, required abortionists to record: the age of the mother, the type of procedure, any complications, the number of pregnancies, births and abortions in the woman’s history, the length and weight of the child and the type of facility in which the abortion was performed.

The year the law was passed, the Center for Disease Control thought there were 113 abortions in Wyoming. The year after it was passed, that number jumped to 716. Unless we are to assume that abortions jumped by over 600% in a single year, the law was addressing a real problem of under-reporting.

Even then, however, the numbers recorded in Wyoming did not match those kept by Planned Parenthood’s research arm, the Alan Guttmacher Institute. Over the next three years, Guttmacher consistently recorded over 1,000 abortions per year while the state of Wyoming only knew of 700 to 800. Then the bottom dropped out.

For the past 38 years Wyoming statistics that are not sheer estimates tend to hover in the single digits while Guttmacher continues to report hundreds of abortions in Wyoming every year.

What accounts for this disparity? The answer seems clear. Wyoming reporting law lacks any enforcement mechanism. So, while the initial impact of the law caused abortionists to report at a higher rate, they soon realized that they could ignore the law with impunity.

For decades, Wyoming’s board of medicine did not investigate any of the non-reporting abortionists. Rep. Scott Clem, R-Gillette, says that the board has the authority to initiate an investigation on its own, others question this. But all agree that it is not required to do so.


Bob Brechtel, Casper

By 2007 Wyoming’s chronic under-reporting had come to the attention of state legislators. Rep. Bob Brechtel, R-Casper, introduced legislation to provide a penalty for abortionists that did not follow the law. Similar legislation was submitted again in 2009, 2016 and 2017.

In all four of these previous attempts to address the problem, the bill either was never assigned to a committee, or the committee declined to act on it. But this year, something changed. This year’s bill, “HB 103 Reporting of abortions” was scheduled for a committee hearing on January 31, 2019. It passed the committee with a significant amendment.

The original version of the bill addressed the problem by imposing a late fee of $1,000 for forms that were not submitted within 30 days. It then provided that, after six months, the board of medicine “may” direct the doctor to submit the form or face disciplinary action.

The House Labor Committee amended that to get rid of the late fee and change the word “may” to “shall.” This compromise solution left the discipline of Wyoming doctors to the board of medicine but would require the board of medicine to take action where it had declined to take action for the previous four decades. With this amendment, it cleared committee on a 5-4 vote.


Sponsor, Scott Clem, Gillette

This is the bill which was heard in by the Senate’s Labor Committee on Wednesday, February 20, 2019. I happened to be in Cheyenne, so I listened in on the hearing. Since our senators from both Evanston and Kemmerer were on the committee, it seems like a good idea to tell the story.

After some opening remarks, Chairman Charles Scott, R-Casper, began by hearing about 30 minutes of testimony from Wyoming citizens who spoke alternately for and against the bill. Three things stood out to me in this testimony.

First, most of the bill’s opponents did not speak against giving the board of medicine investigatory authority. Rather, they opposed the reporting of abortions altogether. Here, Chairman Scott was graciously indulgent.


Chairman, Charles Scott and Sen. Anthony Bouchard

He could have reminded the speakers that Wyoming state law already requires reporting of abortions and that the passage or failure of this bill would not change that. Instead, he allowed healthy latitude for people to speak their minds.

Incidentally, the only appreciable change to the content of what is reported is that where the 1977 law requires the length and weight of the aborted child, HB 103 would allow the abortionist to substitute only the gestational age. This information does not merely satisfy bureaucratic curiosity. It is vital to the enforcement of Wyoming law that bans abortion after the viability of the child.

A second theme of the bill’s opponents was that there are so few abortions performed in Wyoming that this bill is unnecessary. When making these assertions, they never cited the sources of their data.

Since the whole point of the bill was to strengthen the reliability of our current data, it would be a circular argument to cite the currently incomplete data as a reason not to fix the problem of incomplete data.

Third, one person asserted that we already have plenty of laws that cover the subject of this bill. However, she did not point out a single place in statute that gave investigative authority to the board of medicine.

If the board of medicine already has the authority and the mandate to enforce Wyoming’s reporting laws, it should be called out for four decades of dereliction of duty. But if the legislature neglected to give them proper authority, it would be manifestly unfair to blame the board. Instead, it should receive the proper power to investigate and discipline through this amended law.

After public comment, the committee made a couple of minor amendments to further strengthen patient privacy provisions. Then the committee discussed the bill itself. 


Sen. Fred Baldwin, Kemmerer

Senator Fred Baldwin (R-Kemmerer) was the first to comment, “I’m disappointed that we need the bill, that we have those two physicians that are plainly sticking their thumb out and thumbing their nose at us and the board of medicine. This should be unnecessary, but if this will correct it, then, I’m for the bill. It’s disappointing that we have people that do that.”

Senator Wendy Schuler (R-Evanston) spoke next. “I think the board of medical examination and those boards are the ones that need to take care of this… If the medical examination board is not doing their job, maybe that’s where we need to go with this... I'll be voting 'no' on this bill.”


Wendy Schuler, Evanston

Responding to this suggestion, Senator Stephan Pappas (R-Cheyenne) said, “I don’t think that’s necessarily correct. I mean, if the board of medicine could have intervened and taken care of the problem, it would. The problem is they don’t have the authority. So, this [bill] now gives the board of medicine the investigative authority… If the board of medicine had that authority, we wouldn’t be here today.”

Stephan Pappas, R-Cheyenne

Senator Anthony Bouchard (R-Cheyenne) closed committee comments by highlighting testimony that Wyoming is one of only four states that is not reporting adequately to the CDC.

After this, Chairman Scott made his final comments: “As you know, I’m on the pro-choice side of the argument… I think this is a bill that somebody who is fundamentally pro-choice can vote for.”

With that, the roll was called. HB 103 Reporting of abortions was passed out of committee. Scott, Baldwin, Pappas and Bouchard voted for it; Schuler voted against it.

As of Friday, February 22, it had passed second reading on the floor. If it passes third reading on Monday, it will be headed to the governor’s desk. Wyoming has had adequate reporting laws in place since 1977. Perhaps after four decades, we are finally ready to give the board of medicine authority to enforce them.

WTE: Humanizing language humanizes us

We now live in a world where the cold-blooded murder of a newborn baby is publicly defended. That is not over-the-top “anti-abortion” rhetoric. It has nothing at all to do with abortion.

Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia first described, and then defended, giving doctors the right to kill a baby that has been born and is living and breathing on its own --the very same thing that earned Kermit Gosnell life in prison.

This is not a fuzzy area in law. In 2002 the U.S. Congress unanimously passed a law that every single child born in America is a “person,” a “human being,” a “child” and an “individual.” Now, Northam is leading a chorus of radicals who want the government to deny any defense of that person’s life.

How did we get here? The answer lies in words. Words do not only communicate ideas, they shape our hearts. The consistent and systematic denial of personhood to any human being forever shapes the way we think of that person.

The orthodoxy pretending that Roe v. Wade is not only law, but also holy and right, strictly forbids referring to the unborn in human or relational terms. Call him a fetus or an embryo, but never a child or a person. Call her a pregnant woman, but never a mother.

But the person who uses dehumanizing language toward others is conditioned to think and feel less than humanely toward them. That, in a nutshell, is Northam’s problem. Once he has thought of the baby he is delivering as inhuman until the moment of birth, he finds it impossible to treat her humanely only five minutes after birth. It’s not just his problem. It is Wyoming’s, as well.

Wyoming’s Senate recently debated SF 128 “Unborn victims of violence act.” It would have made it possible to charge with the crime of murder a person who killed an unborn child, except in the act of an abortion. The issue came down to language.

When the Senate Judiciary Committee heard the bill, Liisa Anselmi-Dalton (D-Rock Springs), offered a three-page amendment to the bill. Mainly, it did two things.

First, it deleted every reference to “an unborn child” and replaced it with “a fetus,” but left the term undefined. Technically, that means any unborn vertebrate, not only humans, would be covered by the law.

That could have been easily clarified. One could specify “human fetus,” or simply define fetus in the law as human. Doing neither raises the suspicion that the entire point of the substitution is to hide the humanity of the unborn child.

Anselmi-Dalton’s amendment also deleted every occurrence of the phrase “mother of the unborn child” and replaced it with “a pregnant woman.” Mother and child are relational terms. “Pregnant woman” is deliberately not.

One cannot admit the existence of a relationship before birth if one will not admit the existence of a person before birth. For decades Wyoming women who recognize and cherish the relationship with their unborn children, have been denied any state recognition of that relationship. 

One curious consequence of replacing “mother” with “pregnant woman” is what it did to the “Exclusions” section. SF 128 said, “nothing in this act shall apply to any act committed by the mother of an unborn child.” The amendment made it, “nothing in this act shall apply to any act committed by a pregnant woman.”

By not specifying the relationship of mother and child, it would have allowed any pregnant woman at all, to kill the fetus of another pregnant woman with impunity. That is not far-fetched. Competent defense attorneys live for such loopholes.

Certainly, that was an unintended loophole. But how do you close it without recognizing the relationship of pregnant woman and child before birth? What do you call that relationship, if not motherhood?

After going back and forth on the amendment, the entire bill was finally defeated. It was deemed “too confusing.” I think we’re not so much confused as we are conflicted.

Now that Northam and company have suddenly lurched into a defense of murder, it is becoming undeniable that dehumanizing people before birth is harming our own humanity as a nation.

There is no way we could have come to this dark place as a culture without the long and sustained campaign of deleting words that recognize the humanity of the unborn and the natural relationship that exists long before birth. The only way we are going to reverse this homicidal trend is with an equally intentional use of humanizing language for every human being born and unborn.

Does Wyoming have the will to reverse course? Or, will next year’s legislature join Northam in excusing infanticide. It’s a time for choosing.

Sexualizing children must stop

 

Wyoming’s legislative session made the national news last week when an LGBT activist group sent an informal letter of complaint to Senate leaders about Lynn Hutchings (R-Cheyenne).

High school students from Cheyenne Central’s Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) club visited the state capitol on February 1. They had come to lobby for a law granting special protections on the basis of “sexual orientation and gender identity” (SOGI). In that capacity, they called Hutchings off the senate floor to argue in favor of the law.

The entire discussion has not been released. So, we don’t know what the kids said that prompted Hutchings’ words. Nor do we know the whole of her reasoning. Only a couple of sentences were sent to the senate leadership wherein she was using a reductio ad absurdam argument to show that SOGI language is not well defined and so, unworkable in law.

The certainty with which they reproduce her words suggest that a recording was made of the exchange. If so, it should be released so that the public can learn the entire context.

According to their complaint, Hutchings “compared [the students] to acts of ****tiality and ****philia.” Aside from the grammatical impossibility of comparing people to activities, there was nothing in the quote which the group provided that supported their accusation. Hutchings made no such comparisons—a fact which she stated in her response.

You will note that I am not republishing the pull-quote here. Nor am I spelling out the words that the group used to characterize it. There are some subjects which should not be openly discussed where children are present. That is the reason why I’m writing about this today.

Both the quote which the activist group attributed to Hutchings and the words which they used in their complaint are cringeworthy and should not be uttered in decent company. Yet we live in a world where these words are constantly in our ears and in our faces.

Families that want to shield their children from such mature subject matters don’t stand a chance. The very fact that 14- and 15-year-olds are talking about these matters in a school club is disturbing. Do their parents know what they are talking about?



Sen. Lynn Hutchings

The GSA Network regularly lobbies against any laws or policies that can inform parents of what their children are saying and doing at school. Their website is filled with subject matter which is inappropriate for minors. In fact, the Q&A section discusses sexually explicit material in answers openly aimed at 13- and 15-year-olds.

Hutching’s words were inappropriate. Not because she was making false comparisons, but because adults have no business talking about such matters with minors whose parents are not present.

As a pastor, when I teach children the commandment, “You shall not commit adultery,” I make it a point to have the parents present in class. I do so out of respect for the innocence of children and in recognition of the authority of parents to protect their own kids.

It is regrettable that Senator Hutchings forgot this unspoken rule, but it is, unfortunately, understandable. Our culture has become so saturated with inappropriate subject matter that we have forgotten how to blush. I include myself in this indictment. Dining room table discussions regularly transgress age-appropriate subject matter.

As modesty standards have fallen in dress codes, they have also fallen in modes of speech, and we haven't even noticed. As a result, our children are sexualized at ever younger ages.

I was outraged to hear that an Evanston middle-schooler was explicitly asked by her teacher whether “same-sex marriage” would be allowed in the constitution of the nation she was supposed to build. How dare an adult male engage an 11-year old girl with such a question? That was every bit as inappropriate as Hutching’s remarks, but nobody even seemed to notice.

As we adults raise our voices in objection to this evil, we find that our own voices contribute to the problem. It’s a catch-22. Our older kids come home from school and raise topics at the dinner table that need to be answered with grace and truth. But the fact remains that neither they nor their younger siblings should have to be dealing with such subjects at all.

I can remember how shocked I was the first time our family drove through Las Vegas. My minivan full of kids was seeing inappropriate sexuality on display everywhere they turned. There was no way that we parents could shield them from it.

What was even more shocking, however, was when I spoke with people who lived in Las Vegas. They had stopped being shocked. If fact, they had even stopped noticing.

While we are so busy arguing both sides of a new morality, we have forgotten entirely that there are children in the room who shouldn’t have to listen in. Wyoming law prohibits “mental injury” to children. It is listed as a form of prosecutable child abuse. Mental injury happens when children are made to experience false or inappropriate materials.

Our entire culture is engaged in a form of child-endangerment that needs to stop. Public decency laws can help. School boards should also re-examine their policies about what subjects are appropriate for teachers to speak about. We should also have robust and reasonable parental notification and opt-out policies.

But in the end, there is no amount of legislation that will solve the problem. The problem is simply too pervasive. Each and every adult must reclaim a sense of modesty in public speech. We need to remember that not every subject and not every word is appropriate for publication in newspapers, or discussion in classrooms.

If the recent dust-up in Cheyenne can contribute to a heightened awareness of this need, some good can come of an unfortunate situation.

Now that the GSA is concerned with the tender ears of 14- and 15-year-olds, it would be a good time for it to take the inappropriate language off its own website. Let’s work together to protect all minors from the constant assault of sexual language. In so doing we can make a better Wyoming and a better world.

Humanizing Language Humanizes Us

Gov. Ralph Northam, Pediatric Neurologist

We now live in a world where the cold-blooded murder of a newborn baby is publicly defended. Over the past two weeks we have seen not one, not two, but dozens of America’s elected leaders defend the indefensible.

It started with Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia giving his opinion of what should happen in the labor/delivery room if a child was born with abnormalities. He said, “I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated, if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother. And so, I think this is really blown out of proportion. But again, we want the government not to be involved in these types of decisions.”

In Northam’s delivery room a newborn child is being swaddled by nurses while the mother and the physician decide whether, or not, to kill her. He asserts that the government should have nothing to say about that decision.

In 2002 the U.S. Congress passed by unanimous consent the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act which explicitly states that the child in Northam’s delivery room, or in an abortionist’s clinic, is recognized by the federal government as a “person,” a “human being,” a “child” and an “individual.” Now, he is publicly asserting that government should have nothing to say in defense of that person’s life.

This is the bright red line that was crossed last week. Once an elected official claims that certain persons, individuals or human beings are outside the protection of law, he has called into question whether the government will protect any person, individual or human being.

How did we get here? The answer lies in words. Words do not only communicate ideas, they shape our thinking. Actually, it goes even deeper than that. The words we use affect our psyche, our soul, the deepest places in our hearts.


When you consistently and systematically deny humanity or personhood to any human being, it shapes the way that you think about him. It is not possible just to flip the switch and think differently from one minute to the next.

In this case, we are talking about an ideology that strictly forbids referring to the unborn in human or relational terms. We can call it a fetus or an embryo, but we dare not refer to it as a child or a person. We can refer to a pregnant woman, but we dare not call her a mother.

This sterile and passionless language is necessary if we wish to maintain that Roe v. Wade is right and just. The difficulty we are experiencing as a society is how and when to start calling an inhuman and unrelated thing by the humanizing and relational language of mother and child.

Whether we propose to flip that switch at “viability” or “birth” or “after the mother and physician have had a discussion,” it is an arbitrary decision.

Worse, it is impossible for the human psyche to turn on a dime. Once we have talked about somebody in dehumanizing language, hearts are conditioned to think and feel less than humanely about him.

Sen. Lynn Hutchings

That, essentially, is Gov. Northam’s problem. Once he has thought of the baby he is delivering as inhuman until the moment of birth, he finds it impossible to treat her humanely only five minutes after birth. It’s not just his problem. It’s ours, as well.

While Northam was claiming that the government has no place in protecting the born-alive child, Wyoming’s Senate was debating the government’s place in protecting the unborn child. Once again, the issue came down to language.

Senator Lynn Hutchings (R-Cheyenne) sponsored SF 128 Unborn victims of violence act. It would have made it possible to charge a person with murder who killed an unborn child, except in the act of an abortion.

It seems like an obvious compromise. Women who chose abortion are not affected, while women who chose life have that choice recognized in Wyoming Statute. The problem was that it used the term “unborn child.” When the Senate Judiciary Committee heard the bill, Liisa Anselmi-Dalton, D-Rock Springs, offered a three-page amendment to the bill. It did two main things to the wording.

First, it deleted every reference to “an unborn child” and replaced it with “a fetus.” Hutchings’ bill had defined “unborn child” as “the offspring of human beings from conception to birth.” But the amendment left “fetus” undefined. Perhaps this was an oversight. Or, perhaps a clear definition of “fetus” would have required the word “human” -- precisely what “fetus” is meant to avoid.

Since Webster’s Dictionary defines fetus as “an unborn or unhatched vertebrate,” one could envision an animal rights activist using this lack of specificity to prosecute the killing of an unborn vertebrate. More to the point, this is precisely the kind of dehumanizing term that led to Northam’s infanticidal remarks.

Liisa Anselmi-Dalton

Anselmi-Dalton’s amendment also deleted every occurrence of the phrase “mother of the unborn child” and replaced it with “a pregnant woman.” Mother and child are relational terms. “Pregnant woman” is deliberately non-relational.


One cannot admit the existence of a relationship before birth if one will not admit the existence of a person before birth. The two go hand-in-hand. Wyoming women who do recognize and cherish the relationship with their unborn children, are still denied any recognition of that relationship in Wyoming law.

One curious consequence of replacing “mother” with “pregnant woman” is what it did to the “Exclusions” section. Hutchings’ bill said, “nothing in this act shall apply to any act committed by the mother of an unborn child.” The amendment made it, “nothing in this act shall apply to any act committed by a pregnant woman.”

By not specifying the relationship of mother and child, it would have allowed any pregnant woman at all, to kill the fetus of another pregnant woman without prosecution. Don’t think that is far-fetched. Any competent defense attorney would see it in a heartbeat.

Certainly, that was an unintended loophole. But how do you close it without recognizing that a pregnant woman has a relationship with the specific child in her womb that no other pregnant woman has with that child? What do you call that relationship, if not motherhood?

The amendment was adopted. But the following Monday the full Senate deleted it. Then the Senate defeated the entire bill (11-18). Many said that they were confused. I don’t think the bill’s language was all that confusing. The confusion, rather, rests upon our entire culture.

Attitudes toward persons under law have been changed through a long and sustained campaign of deleting words that recognize the humanity of the unborn and the natural relationship that exists long before birth. Now we are having difficulty as a nation, recognizing those same realities after birth and beyond.

That confusion has given us a government that is not sure whether it has a duty to protect every person, individual and human being. What can we do to regain the certainty that has been lost?

The first thing to do is to stop lying to ourselves. One cannot dehumanize something for months on end without affecting the deepest places of our own humanity. Words not only mean things. They do things to us. They can elevate us as we elevate others. Or they can debase us as we debase others.

It’s time that our national conversation reflect this truth. We should start by using humanizing language in Wyoming law.

Editor's Note:
A previous version of this article misidentified the author of the amendment. The amendment offered by Anselmi-Dalton was approved by the Judiciary committee and undersigned by the chair of the committee, regrettably I mistook Chairman Nethercott's signature for authorship of the amendment.

WTE: State power and family formation

Wyoming legislators are nearly halfway through the 2019 session. In the rush to handle 499 bills, it is easy to lose sight of the foundational principle of good governance.

Government power should always protect individuals from harm while using the least amount of state power that is necessary. Let’s look at two bills to illustrate this point.

“HB 60 Underage marriage-exceptions repeal” was proposed to address some horrific situations. Minors from some cultures are occasionally forced by parents into young marriages. This is a form of child abuse with lifelong consequences. The state has a duty to protect the rights of every citizen, no matter how young.

The proposed law would have raised Wyoming’s legal age of marriage from 16 to 18 years old. It also would have taken away any ability for parents and teenagers to ask a judge for special permission before turning 18.

Initially the bill won the overwhelming approval of the House Judiciary Committee (8-1). But when the bill came to the house floor, some more fundamental questions arose.

If some parents abuse their children, should all parents be stripped of parental rights? If some minors are exploited, should all minors lose their right to marry? For that matter, why does the state have an interest in marriage at all?

In answer to the last question, the state cares about marriage because it has a duty to make sure that every child is cared for in the best way possible, and marriage does that better than any other institution.

So why should the state deny marriage to a young couple that wants its child to be born into a stable marriage? If the original problem was the occasional unjust exercise of parental authority, how is that fixed by the state unjustly taking power to itself?

So, the House amended the bill to continue allowing exceptions, if approved by parents and judges. Judges are there to discern if a minor is free enough from control of other adults to give meaningful consent. The following day Rep. Pelkey (D-Laramie), the bill’s sponsor, amended it yet again, to take away that judicial and parental discretion prior to 16 years of age. The amended bill failed on a 26-31 vote.

The debate surrounding underage marriage stands in contrast to the debate about “HB 140 Abortion-48 hour waiting period.” As with coerced marriage, young adults are more susceptible to coerced abortion than more mature women.

Of course, power differentials are created by a variety of factors other than age. Parents, boyfriends, husbands and abortion providers all have ways to pressure a woman into making the decision that they want, rather than what she wants.

The Eliot Institute is one of the leading advocates for women who have been forced to abort. In a 2012 report they found that 64% of women feel pressured to abort; 79% were denied information about available alternatives; 67% felt rushed or uncertain; and 84% were not sufficiently informed before an abortion.

As with marriage, it is the duty of the state to protect the human rights of all women not to be coerced into an abortion. The 48-hour waiting period is designed to do just that. It addresses the 67% of women who feel rushed or uncertain. It takes away the ability of abortion providers and authority figures to manipulate her decision using travel distance and time considerations as leverage.

Underage marriage and pressure to abort are related in that both marriage and abortion have to do with the transition from childhood to adulthood. Ultimately the attainment of adulthood has less to do with an arbitrary age—be it 16, 18 or 21—and more to do with the physical and emotional maturity to form a family of our own.

Seen through this lens, debate on “HB 60 Underage marriage-exceptions repeal” and “HB 140 Abortion-48 hour waiting period” shines a spotlight on two very different exercises of state power.

One would use the power of government to forbid formation of a family even when a family has already been formed by the conception of a child. The other would use government’s power to shield a vulnerable woman from more powerful persons who may want her to choose an abortion even while she wants to choose life.

Life, marriage and family are all pre-political realities. They have been happening long before Wyoming—or any other state or society--passed any laws to regulate them. For this reason, any legislating of these matters should use as light a touch as possible.

These mysteries should not be manhandled. They should be respected and upheld as the first duty of government.

Government Power and Family Formation

The 2019 Wyoming legislative session is nearly half over. Our elected representatives and senators are in the process of grinding through 499 bills. Some of these have already lost in committee, others lost on the floor. Many will die without ever receiving a hearing, some without even being assigned to a committee.

During all this flurry of activity, it is easy to lose sight of the forest on account of so many trees. Especially, bills that deal with highly personal matters and divisive topics can be argued heatedly with talking points intended to over-simplify and focus on one aspect of a problem while ignoring other relevant aspects.

For instance, HB 60, Underage marriage-exceptions repeal, would have raised Wyoming’s legal age of marriage from 16 years old, under current law, to 18. But that’s not all. It also proposed to prevent any possibility of parents, minors or judges from taking special circumstances into account. That is the reason it was titled “exceptions repeal.”

Current Wyoming law sets the minimum marriage age at 16 but gives a mechanism for those younger than that to apply for an exception. If the parents consent and a judge approves it, they can obtain a marriage license.

The problem is that there are some truly horrifying stories about minors forced into marriages against their will. That is a form of child abuse that can have lifelong consequences. It is the duty of the state to protect the rights of every citizen, no matter how old, to give informed and free consent to marriage. That contributed to the House Judiciary Committee’s recommendation of the bill on an 8-1 vote.

In the face of horrific injustices, we instinctively protect people with the strongest exercise of power we can muster. But over the following weekend, legislators began to see more clearly that the abusive acts of some parents are not best handled by unilaterally stripping all parents and adolescent children of the authority to consent to a marriage younger than the norm.

At the end of the day, the only reason the state has an interest in marriage is because the state has a duty to make sure that children are cared for in the best way possible. Marriage does that better than any other institution.

So why would the state deny marriage to a young couple that wants its child to be born into a stable marriage? How is it better to give the state arbitrary authority over the lives of minors when the original problem was parents who exercised arbitrary authority over the lives of their minor children?

So, the House amended the original bill raising the age to 18, but reinserting the exceptions. It held that judges are capable of discerning when a minor is free enough from parental control and knowledgeable enough to give meaningful consent. The following day the bill failed after it was amended again, once more stripping young couples of the ability to apply for exceptions.

This interesting saga stands in contrast to another bill that intends to address the coercion of women to consent to another irreversible action. HB 140, Abortion-48 hour waiting period, recognizes that abortion, like marriage, has life-long consequences.

Just as there are horror stories of people being coerced into marriage, there are also plenty of stories of women being coerced into abortions. It is the duty of the state to protect the human rights of all women not to be coerced into an abortion.

Coercion happens when there is a power differential that is exploited. People in positions of power over a woman, like parents, boyfriends, husbands and abortion providers all have ways to pressure the woman into making the decision that they want, rather than what she wants.

The Elliot Institute is one of the leading advocates for women who have been forced to abort. In a 2012 report they found that 64% of women feel pressured to abort; 79% were denied information about available alternatives; 67% felt rushed or uncertain; and 84% were not sufficiently informed before an abortion.

The 48-hour waiting period recognizes the duty of the state to protect women from being coerced into a life-changing decision that she does not want for herself. Unlike HB 60 which flat-out denied some women a choice to marry, the waiting period does not use the power of the state to keep her from making a decision. Rather, it uses the power of the state to make it harder for others to pressure her one way or the other.

We need to pass common sense laws that give women access to information about alternatives. We need to make sure that women have full access to sufficient information about abortion. In a similar vein, HB 140 addresses the 60% of women who experienced time pressure. It takes away the ability of abortion providers and authority figures to manipulate her decision using travel distance and time considerations as leverage.

Because pressure to abort is more commonly experienced by young women, it shares in the power dynamic of forced marriages. Proponents of both bills recognized that the state of Wyoming has a duty to protect people in vulnerable positions from pressures placed upon them by those with more power.

These two bills are related also in the sense that marriage and abortion both have to do with the transition from childhood to adulthood. Ultimately the attainment of adulthood has less to do with an arbitrary age—be it 16, 18 or 21—and more to do with the maturation of our reproductive systems and the ability to form a family of our own.

Seen through this lens, debate on HB 60, Underage marriage-exceptions repeal and HB 140, Abortion-48 hour waiting period, shines a spotlight on two very different exercises of state power.

One would use the power of government to forbid formation of a family even when a family has already been formed by the conception of a child. The other would use government’s power to shield a vulnerable young woman from more powerful persons who may want her to choose an abortion even while she wants to choose life.

Life, marriage and family are all pre-political realities. They have been happening long before any laws were ever enacted and will continue to happen long after America is a footnote in world history.

For this reason, any legislating of these matters should use as light a touch as possible. These mysteries should not be manhandled. They should be respected and upheld as the first duty of government.