Wisconsin Supreme Court to consider whether 175-year-old law bans abortion

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Supreme Court decided Tuesday to consider two challenges to a 175-year-old law that conservatives maintain bans abortion without letting the cases wind through lower courts.

Abortion advocates stand an excellent chance of prevailing in both cases given the high court’s liberal tilt and remarks a liberal justice made on the campaign trail about how she supports abortion rights.

Wisconsin lawmakers enacted statutes in 1849 that had been widely interpreted as outlawing abortion in all cases except to save the mother’s life. The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion nullified the statutes, but legislators never repealed them. The high court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade reactivated them.

Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit challenging the statutes in 2022, arguing they were too old to enforce and a 1985 law that permits abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb supersedes them. A Dane County judge ruled last year that the statutes outlaw attacking a woman in an attempt to kill her unborn baby but doesn’t ban abortions. The decision emboldened Planned Parenthood to resume offering abortions in Wisconsin after halting procedures when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Sheboygan County District Attorney Joel Urmanski, a Republican, asked the state Supreme Court in February to overturn the ruling without letting an appeal move through the state’s lower appellate courts. He argued the ruling will have a statewide impact and guide lawmakers and the case will ultimately end at the Supreme Court anyway.

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