Wyoming lawmakers use pro-natalist arguments to justify proposed new partial abortion ban

At the anti-abortion March for Life rally in D.C. last year, Vice President J.D. Vance had a clear message.

"So let me say very simply, I want more babies in the United States of America," Vance said to a cheering crowd.

As birth rates fall in the U.S., prominent conservatives such as Vance are encouraging Americans to have more children. They say that's crucial to maintaining the nation's workforce, so there will be enough caregivers for an aging population.

Now, those arguments are being cited to pass new state-level restrictions on abortion, including in Wyoming, which recently passed a law to outlaw abortions once there's a "detectable fetal heartbeat."

According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, it is "clinically inaccurate" to describe what can be heard via an ultrasound during very early pregnancy as a heartbeat. Cardiac cells in an embryo may exhibit electrical activity that is detectable, but there are no cardiac valves that could generate the sound that people know as a heartbeat.

The Wyoming law — which has now been temporarily blocked in court — prohibits abortions after cardiac activity can be detected, which is generally around the sixth week of pregnancy.

"We're sending a message that children are important and that they're the future," said Republican state lawmaker and former nurse Evie Brennan.

"Without an up and coming population that grows up here that wants to stay here, then we just become a stagnant or an aging slash dying state," she added.

Suzanne Bell, a demographer at John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said Wyoming's tactic is unlikely to substantially grow its population.

"Imposing a ban on abortion is not going to transform the trajectory of a state's fertility pattern," Bell said.

She added that abortion bans can lead to a short-term population bump. Wyoming's neighbor, Idaho, saw one after it instituted one of America's strictest abortion bans in 2023.

"What that works out to in absolute terms is about 240 excess births," Bell said.

But at the same time, researchers found Idaho was hemorrhaging healthcare workers. It now has 35% fewer OB-GYNs than before their law went into effect.

In Wyoming, population loss has been an issue for decades. Giving a tour to prospective students at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Claire Lane said there's not a lot of industry here.

" I feel like a lot of students don't see a ton of opportunities maybe necessarily in their fields to work here in Wyoming," said Lane, a college senior with purple-tipped hair.

She said she plans to stick around for graduate school in speech language pathology, but she'll probably leave the state to find work.

"We do have a super small population, so a lot of students know that they might need to go somewhere else to find a job," Lane said.

A 2024 Harvard Kennedy School working paper said by the time Wyomingites reach their thirties, nearly two thirds have left — one of the highest rates in the country. It said a lot of young people are leaving for cities, of which Wyoming has few.

"With bigger areas, there comes more unique people and more creative people," said Aidan Freeman, a second-year music student at the University of Wyoming.

Sitting in the student union building, Freeman said he and his partner hope to move to Fort Collins, Colorado soon.

"Wyoming is very traditionalist in some ways," Freeman said. "It is kind of a bubble."

Researchers from Harvard recommended Wyoming invest in its rural areas, making them more economically diverse and investing in a supply of housing for young people.

Brennan said she knows the partial abortion ban, which she helped pass, is not the complete answer to growing Wyoming's population. She said the pro-life movement also needs to start focusing on more long-term solutions.

"We have to send the message that not only are you important in utero, but you're also important on day one when you're born, like outside of utero," Brennan said. "And I don't know that the legislature has had good, robust conversations on what that looks like."

Brennan said she hopes the legislature will evaluate the effects of the six-week abortion ban, but that depends on whether courts let it stand.

Pro-abortion rights groups challenged it soon after it passed. On April 24, a federal district court judge temporarily blocked the law, while litigation continues. That means abortion is once again legal in the state after six weeks.