Key Point: “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. … The George Washington University law professor Sonia Suter said the bill fit into a broader trend of taking away authority from medical professionals and putting it into the hands of politicians.”

The Guardian: Wyoming Republicans’ anti-abortion bill inadvertently targets chemotherapy and surgeries

By Cy Neff

• 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.

• [Republican] 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.”
• But Wyoming attorneys and healthcare law professionals at Boston University, George Washington University, Johns Hopkins and Pittsburgh University, say the problem is that a broad swath of healthcare procedures can be considered to cause “harm” by design.
• “There’s a slew of medical procedures, surgeries, treatments that can have potentially positive outcomes but may also cause harm in the short period or as an unintended consequence,” the Wyoming attorney Abigail Fournier said.
• “It’s scary to me, because I think it could be interpreted to be very limiting in terms of what healthcare providers can do.”
• The Boston University healthcare law professor Nicole Huberfeld has seen plenty of crafty attempts to restrict abortion access such as transvaginal ultrasound requirements, or laws mandating abortion clinics meet the licensing requirements of ambulatory surgical centers.
• But Huberfeld and other experts interviewed said that they had yet to encounter a bill looking to redefine healthcare entirely.
• Huberfeld will not be surprised if other states follow Wyoming’s lead, particularly those that have constitutional rights to healthcare.

• “If they don’t have bills like this, I expect that they will take a page from Wyoming’s book and try the same thing,” Huberfeld said.
• The George Washington University law professor Sonia Suter said the bill fit into a broader trend of taking away authority from medical professionals and putting it into the hands of politicians.