Discovery, in more than one fashion.

Reading about a lawsuit and actually knowing what is going on in it are two different things.  For that reason, you have to be really careful about any press reports you read about litigation. They're often pretty far off the mark and often filtered through the reporter's perceptions, which almost always are ignorant as to the law and what's going on in litigation.

This odd headline from the Cowboy State Daily brings this up.

Abortion Advocates Say Wyoming Can’t Defend Its Ban Because Of Rape, Incest Exemptions

Reading between the lines, what seems to be the case is that the plaintiffs served discovery on the State seeking to show that the statute in question wasn't rationally related to a legitimate state purpose. From reading it, it's a pretty desperate effort which would demonstrate that 1) they think they're going to lose, or 2) its throw away discovery.  I'd guess No. 1. They're now fearful that the state is going to be able to prove that the statutes are rationally related to a legitimate state purpose. So, the effort now is to show that laws which leave out those conceived due to rape and incest are inconsistent with the purpose of valuing all human life (they are), and that some of the legislators were motivated by their religious beliefs (they probably were).

Things are, in this context, that doesn't matter.

It might be, and I'd argue, is inconsistent.  But lots of laws are, and the inconsistencies here don't matter from a legal prospective.  Moreover, if they do, it'll bring about a stricter law in short order.  The Plaintiffs hope that they can defeat that on the basis that murder isn't healthcare, and of course, they're defending murder.

That would argue for repeal of the Wyoming constitutional provision that was in fact a really stupid addition to the state's constitution, but it would also perhaps pave the way forward.  The argument would be, yep, this isn't about health care, it's about murder, and therefore the unfortunate paranoid addition to the state's constitution doesn't apply.

The fact that we're now at this stage I think shows that the judge was in error in not just certifying this entire thing to the Wyoming Supreme Court.  I thought she should have.  Of course, she's now taking in evidence which may make it difficult for her ultimate ruling to be appealed, in which case the wisdom of her approach will be proven.

Regarding wisdom or lack of it, I continue to be amazed, to a degree, by the extent to which supporters of abortion use language that fails to really get to the core of things.  Some of it is just because they don't wish to admit it to themselves, and some of it is because they haven't thought it out. At the end of the day, however, what suits like this are based on, or the spouting of liberals like Robert Reich are based on, is the thesis that we're the centers of the universe.  Nothing is more significant than us, therefore we can murder.  That's pretty much it.  We can define what lives are worthy of life, and which are not, simply because we're what counts and all that counts.

One of the irony of arguments like that is that some of those making them are people who fit into categories which, less than 100 years ago, were deemed in some quarters not to count, and therefore were killed.