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On her lunch break, Evelyn drove to Albertsons to buy another pregnancy test. She wandered the cool, fluorescent-lit store and, after a while, asked a pharmacist for help. The pharmacist led her to an unlabeled section next to the hair dyes. She bought a test and also a box of Plan B, just in case.

She headed to her Jackson home. A cardboard sign with the words “My Body My Choice” painted in red leaned against a dusty glass window. Her dog Winston and her housemate’s dog Shiitake rattled the gate and pressed their noses to the slats to greet her. She shuffled past them into the front door.

Winston relaxes inside Evelyn and Carly's house on July 15 in Jackson.

On the right, a line of hooks piled with worn leashes and a calendar with a picture of “Love Island” contestants, Winston photoshopped over one of them. To her left, a bookshelf with a blue fish in a glass bowl, a troll figurine, a can of bear spray and books. A pair of bleached ox skulls stared at her from their mounts on the living room walls. Her housemate and college friend Carly sat on the couch working.

The pregnancy test sat on the bathroom sink while Evelyn took a shower. Her other tests had come back negative. But it was Friday, June 24. The Supreme Court decided hours earlier to reverse Roe v. Wade, erasing constitutional protections around abortion access, protections that had existed for nearly 50 years, and paving the way for Wyoming’s abortion trigger ban to end the practice in the state.

No room for mistakes. Evelyn could see the door closing.

She got out of the shower, looked at the test, picked it up, walked out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her.

“We might have to change our weekend plans,” she told Carly.

“What do you mean?” Carly looked up from her laptop.

Evelyn held the pregnancy test in her hands.

Evelyn sits on her bed after returning to her Jackson home from the doctor's office, where she had a follow-up appointment after receiving an abortion. Evelyn, who did not want her last name used, will likely be one of the last women in the state to receive a legal abortion. 

Drive around Wyoming towns or highways and you’ll see them: car-sized billboards rising up from the prairie, smiling, big-eyed babies looking out at you. “Choose Life!” these billboards say. You’ll see other billboards of despondent women, alone, looking off to someplace you can’t see, or with their faces hidden in their hands. They’ve just learned they’re pregnant. Those billboards tell people passing that there are options, there’s a way forward.

Hospitals in Rawlins and Kemmerer have cut their pregnancy services. Travel to medical facilities can be dangerous in the winter. It’s hard to get health insurance when your resources are limited; Medicaid is only available to people who fall under certain limited categories and certain limited income brackets, and the Legislature has dragged its feet over expanding eligibility. Not enough doctors and nurses, the state’s hospitals association has said repeatedly. The 2022 Wyoming Counts Kids data book shows that pregnancy-related deaths are up. Preterm deliveries up. Low birth weights up.

The state has cut away at the option of abortion too. Abortion has been legal, but with the trigger ban passed earlier this year, which is expected to take effect this week, it will be illegal except in cases of rape or incest, or if the woman’s life or health is in serious danger. That leeway is too much for some; there’s bound to be more proposed legislation for more restrictions around abortion in the future.

To get an abortion as a Wyomingite, you’re likely to drive hours anyway — down south to Colorado, up north to Montana, out west to Jackson, the place where Evelyn has lived for the past three years, a place that sticks out from the rest of Wyoming in a lot of different ways (billionaire’s outdoor paradise, cowboy country tourist trap, home of the grizzlies, mountains cutting into the sky, blue dot in the middle of a red sea). The only clinic in Wyoming that offers abortions is there, where two doctors, Katie Noyes and Giovannina Anthony, will keep providing the service up to the moment the door slams shut.

Evelyn sat in her car after learning she was pregnant. She called the clinic to book an appointment. Then she drove back to her work at a design firm without eating lunch.

Her coworkers didn’t know that anything with her was different, that she might be among the last women to get a legal abortion in Wyoming. They talked about Roe’s reversal. She listened to the words but didn’t say much. It felt like she was in an episode of Netflix’s “Black Mirror,” in a different place, weighing different consequences. It was her last day of work at that job, and she just needed to get through it, and after she got through it, she went to her new job as an assistant manager at a restaurant in downtown Jackson.

Hundreds of people gathered nearby that evening in Jackson’s town square to protest Roe’s reversal.

They carried coat hangers and signs: “Women’s rights are human rights!” “My Body My Vote!” Some protesters wandered over to the restaurant where Evelyn worked to eat and have drinks afterward. Old women. Young women. Women with kids. Coming in pairs and groups. “How’s it going?” Evelyn asked them. “Not very good,” a lot of them answered. An older man wearing a MAGA hat came in alone and complained about the demonstration. Evelyn just smiled.

She’s never wanted kids. She doesn’t want them now as a woman in her mid-twenties, and she’s pretty sure that’s not ever going to change.

She’s tried a lot of different contraceptives: the pill, the patch, the arm implant. All of them circulate hormones throughout the body. She had hot flashes. She gained weight. She was tired. She felt frustrated much of the time. At a certain point, she didn’t know anymore what was the hormones and what was her, so she tried an experiment and went off birth control. She used condoms and tracked her cycles instead. That made her feel a lot better; it made her feel great. She had more energy. She lost some weight. She didn’t want to go back to using other contraceptives.

Getting pregnant made her reconsider.

She came home from work to an empty apartment the day after Roe fell.

Carly was gone. Even Winston was away for the weekend. Alone with the house plants. A string of Christmas lights around the window. Dog toys strewn about. The ox skulls watching her. Her body was doing things that she didn’t want it to do. She lay on the floor and cried.

Evelyn called her parents the next day.

They were hurtling in their car down an interstate highway through a place in New York where there’s not much to look at, where you’re mostly alone with your thoughts, and when she told them she was pregnant, they didn’t know what to say at first.

Her mom has never had an unwanted pregnancy. But it was something she was afraid of as a young woman. Roe still protected abortion access then, but it wasn’t always accepted. And it was hard to get birth control; she had to wait until turning 18 to go to her college’s student health center and ask for contraceptives. She didn’t tell her parents, she went to the appointment alone, she asked for the pill once she was behind a door and she grit her teeth for her yearly exam when she had to ask for a refill.

Evelyn’s parents pulled over at a rest stop after they hung up. Her mom got out of the car and walked around. She called Evelyn back.

The clinic waiting room was quiet when it opened at 8 a.m. on the Monday after the Supreme Court decision. Warm light against pale blue walls. Pamphlets and books on the shelves. Soft voices emanating from the labyrinth of exam rooms and offices. Low rasp of the air conditioner.

Then the phones started ringing and they kept ringing at a steady pace, one following another. Women calling from across the state, calling from out-of-state. Many of them were from Utah, where the trigger ban came down the same day as Roe’s reversal. Since the Supreme Court decision, more women have called asking for IUDs, for permanent sterilization.

Among the calls that day was one from Evelyn.

Evelyn listens to Dr. Noyes explain her options for birth control during her follow-up appointment on July 15 at the Women's Health Center and Family Care Clinic in Jackson. She decided to get a copper IUD, which prevents most pregnancies for 10 to 12 years. 

She had learned about Wyoming’s trigger law. She had done some Googling, and the Googling led her to a website that listed all the states that had current abortion bans. One of the states listed, incorrectly, was Wyoming. Could she still go to her appointment? Could she still get an abortion? Would she have to travel to another state? The receptionist assured her that everything was still all right, she could come.

After Evelyn’s call, there was another. And another.

Evelyn saw a brown van parked across the street from her apartment on the day of her appointment.

It had California plates and pro-life signs taped to it: PRO-LIFE! PRO-LIFE MATTERS! REPENTANCE CHANGES THINGS!

That made her a little paranoid. What were the chances? Had someone overheard her talking about her planned abortion? She took a photo of the van and sent it to Carly. Then she walked to her appointment.

A small group of anti-abortion demonstrators stood by the bus stop near the clinic building. All men. What were they even protesting at this point, she wondered. They had gotten what they wanted. She walked around them, into the cool building through a pair of double doors and down the sound-muffled carpet hallway to the clinic office. She checked in and sat to fill out some paperwork.

Evelyn hates waiting rooms. Pale blue walls. Low lights. Fake plants on shelves, on the carpet floor. Canvas photos decorating the walls — a girl and a boy with skis atop a snow-covered mountain, portrait of a woman illuminated in a dark room. Evelyn noticed some books on a shelf near her. “Your Baby and Child.” “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.” “The Mother of All Pregnancy Books.” A little girl stared at a phone screen, scrolling through TikTok at full volume. Phones rang.

A nurse opened the door and called Evelyn’s name. The nurse took her weight and blood pressure. Then she led Evelyn to an exam room, shut the door, asked her questions and gathered facts. Have you had any ultrasounds for this pregnancy? Are you monogamous? Do you have a regular sexual partner? What birth control do you use now? What birth control methods are you considering?

“I can’t believe that I messed up,” Evelyn thought to herself then.

She felt the world examining her under a microscope, a spotlight on her, on the scenario that she found herself in, like she was being made an example. Evelyn started to cry.

Carly was sitting on the kitchen floor back at their apartment making a sign to protest the anti-abortion demonstrators when she got a call from Evelyn asking her to come to the clinic. She left the sign half-made, told her boyfriend to go buy some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream (the chocolate fudge brownie flavor) and ran to the clinic, looking at Evelyn’s shared location on her phone.

Carly and Evelyn, who are friends from college, laugh together on their couch in the apartment they share on July 15 in Jackson. Carly came to Evelyn's first appointment. 

She took the same path, through the double doors, down the carpet hallway, into the exam room where Evelyn and the doctor waited. By that time Evelyn had stopped crying. Carly walked in and gave her a hug. She sat next to her for the rest of the appointment.

Back in the hallways of the clinic is a windowless office with a cabinet. Inside the cabinet sits a white plastic bin that holds small orange boxes held together with rubber bands, squeezed next to opaque white pill bottles. That’s it; mifepristone and misoprostol, the two medications that Dr. Noyes prescribed to Evelyn so she could have an abortion. She could get a felony charge and 14 years in prison if she gave them to Evelyn for an abortion under Wyoming’s trigger ban. For nearly a decade Dr. Noyes had listened to patients, answered their questions, given them the information and the help they needed. Some of her tears on the night of Roe’s reversal were from the thought of not being able to help people who feel desperate. One patient had asked her since then if she was OK, in a way that patients hadn’t really asked her before.

Dr. Noyes had Evelyn take the mifepristone in the exam room. One little tablet, a cup of water. The mifepristone stops the pregnancy from progressing. Then she sent Evelyn home with four tablets of misoprostol, tucked into a little manila envelope, to take later.

After the appointment, Evelyn and Carly walked home, sat on the porch with Carly’s boyfriend and had some beers.

Everyone was asleep when Evelyn got home from work near midnight the next day. She ate some ice cream, took some ibuprofen and put the misoprostol tablets in her cheeks. Misoprostol makes the cervix soften and the uterus contract. It also makes you bleed. Evelyn sat on the sofa and watched a couple episodes of Schitt’s Creek while the tablets dissolved. Then she went to sleep.

Evelyn's room seen on on July 15 in Jackson.

The bleeding and cramping lasted several days. It wasn’t too painful, not much different from a heavy period. She could get through the day on ibuprofen. Carly gave her some pads. When Evelyn went back to work, she was on the restaurant floor, managing the waitlist and the hosts and the servers and the support staff, talking to people, asking them how their meal was, making sure everything ran smoothly. Meanwhile, they didn’t know. Her uterus contracted, she bled. She was having an abortion.

Evelyn walked through the double doors a couple weeks later — pink zip-up sweatshirt, yoga pants, camo mask. She walked down the carpet hallway to the clinic.

A black loveseat with turquoise and tan pillows sat at the back of the exam room. A big screen angled down toward the exam chair from a mount near the ceiling. Evelyn sat on the edge of the chair in a hospital gown with her shoes off. Dr. Noyes sat facing her on a stool with wheels.

Evelyn waits for Dr. Noyes to give her a Pap smear during her follow-up appointment on July 15 at the Women's Health Center and Family Care Clinic in Jackson. A Pap smear is a routine procedure to check for cervical cancer. 

A plan for contraception: Dr. Noyes held a colorful laminated chart in her hands. “How Well Does Birth Control Work?” it said in all caps at the top. The implant, the IUDs and sterilization got five stars. The pill, the patch, the ring and the shot got three. Pulling out, fertility awareness, diaphragms and condoms just one. Evelyn decided to get a copper IUD — a little device that looks like a maple seed and sits in your uterus — even though she didn’t really want one. But she didn’t want to worry about getting pregnant again. She said she’d like to consider getting a tubal ligation — permanent sterilization — in the future.

Getting an IUD can be painful. Evelyn asked if she could take some medication for the procedure.

“This is very anxiety inducing for me,” she told the doctor. “I’m just a huge wuss.”

Dr. Noyes points out Evelyn's cervix and uterus during an ultrasound at the follow-up appointment on July 15 at Women's Health Center and Family Care Clinic. 

“No,” Dr. Noyes said, “this can be very triggering for people.”

An ultrasound: Evelyn reclined in the exam chair with her feet in the stirrups. The big screen above her showed grainy black and white images. She could see what was inside of her that’s hidden from the outside. Bladder. Ovaries. Cervix. Uterus. Dr. Noyes traced each one with the cursor of the computer mouse. She pointed toward the boundary of the screen.

“This is your vagina and kind of the outside world up here,” she said. That made Evelyn laugh. Her uterus was empty. Evelyn was no longer pregnant.

A Pap smear: routine procedure for women to check for cancerous cells in the cervix.

Dr. Noyes performs a Pap smear on Evelyn during her follow-up appointment on July 15 at Women's Health Center and Family Care Clinic. A Pap smear is a routine procedure to check for cervical cancer. 

Dr. Noyes pulled out a lamp and shined it between Evelyn’s legs. It illuminated the writhing mass of blue hammerhead sharks tattooed on Evelyn’s foot. Dr. Noyes talked her through it; one brush to collect cells on the outside of her cervix, second brush to collect cells on the inside of her cervix. Deep breath in, blow it out.

“It looks healthy,” Dr. Noyes said. “Nothing funny going on there.”

After everything was done, Dr. Noyes told Evelyn to book another appointment at the front desk for the IUD insertion. There probably wouldn’t be any more available times, but she would schedule her in at lunch or after work.

Dr.Noyes puts on her gloves before performing an ultrasound and pap smear on Evelyn on July 15 at Women's Health and Family Care.

Dr.Noyes performs an ultrasound to make sure Evelyn was not still pregnant following her abortion on July 15 at Women's Health and Family Care.

Evelyn clenches her toes in the stirrups before getting a pap smear by Dr.Noyes during her follow up appointment on July 15 at Women's Health and Family Care.

The paper lays crumbled after Evelyn's follow up appointment on July 15 at Women's Health and Family Care.

Dr.Noyes puts on her gloves before performing an ultrasound and pap smear on Evelyn on July 15 at Women's Health and Family Care.

Dr.Noyes performs an ultrasound to make sure Evelyn was not still pregnant following her abortion on July 15 at Women's Health and Family Care.

Evelyn clenches her toes in the stirrups before getting a pap smear by Dr.Noyes during her follow up appointment on July 15 at Women's Health and Family Care.

The paper lays crumbled after Evelyn's follow up appointment on July 15 at Women's Health and Family Care.

Evelyn doesn’t usually show when she’s upset. Her tears during those two weeks were partly from relief. She was certain she didn’t want kids. She didn’t falter on her decision to get an abortion. She felt grateful that she was able to get one.

But she also cried thinking about a different scenario, if this had happened two or three weeks later, when things might not have been OK.

“And it’s not gonna be OK for other women,” she said over the phone one day. Her voice faltered.

She walked home after the appointment. The dogs made a commotion at the gate. Winston leaped over it to greet her. Carly sat working on the couch. Evelyn walked to the fridge, got a can of beer and cracked it open. A little before 4 p.m., she left the apartment to go to work.

Some of the people in this story asked that their names or last names not be used for privacy concerns. 

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The plaintiffs argue the trigger ban violates the Wyoming Constitution's guarantee of the right to health care access. 

The court ruling stops Wyoming’s abortion ban from being enforced for at least 14 days. It comes hours after the prohibition went into effect.

The lone clinic in Wyoming that provides abortions plans to resume services now that a judge had temporarily halted the state's trigger ban.

Evelyn sits on her bed after returning to her Jackson home from the doctor's office, where she had a follow-up appointment after receiving an abortion. Evelyn, who did not want her last name used, will likely be one of the last women in the state to receive a legal abortion. 

Evelyn listens to Dr. Noyes explain her options for birth control during her follow-up appointment on July 15 at the Women's Health Center and Family Care Clinic in Jackson. She decided to get a copper IUD, which prevents most pregnancies for 10 to 12 years. 

Carly and Evelyn, who are friends from college, laugh together on their couch in the apartment they share on July 15 in Jackson. Carly came to Evelyn's first appointment. 

Evelyn waits for Dr. Noyes to give her a Pap smear during her follow-up appointment on July 15 at the Women's Health Center and Family Care Clinic in Jackson. A Pap smear is a routine procedure to check for cervical cancer. 

Dr. Noyes performs a Pap smear on Evelyn during her follow-up appointment on July 15 at Women's Health Center and Family Care Clinic. A Pap smear is a routine procedure to check for cervical cancer. 

Dr. Noyes points out Evelyn's cervix and uterus during an ultrasound at the follow-up appointment on July 15 at Women's Health Center and Family Care Clinic. 

Evelyn's room seen on on July 15 in Jackson.

Winston relaxes inside Evelyn and Carly's house on July 15 in Jackson.

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