CHICAGO — Democrats in Wisconsin are hailing a court ruling that will allow abortions to resume in the state.
Last summer, the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade reactivated an 1849 Wisconsin law that conservatives interpreted as banning abortion. Abortion providers in Wisconsin shut down for fear of violating the ban.
Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit days after Roe v Wade was overturned, arguing that the Wisconsin law was too old to enforce and that a separate 1985 law allowing abortions before fetuses could survive outside the womb trumped the ban. Three doctors later joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs, saying they feared being prosecuted for performing abortions.
In July, Dane County Circuit Judge Diane Schlipper ruled that the law prohibits someone from assaulting a woman with the intent to kill her unborn child, but doesn’t apply to consensual medical abortions. The ruling prompted Planned Parenthood to resume abortions in Milwaukee and Madison in September for the first time since Roe v Wade was overturned.
Joel Urmanski, the Republican district attorney in Sheboygan County, where Planned Parenthood’s third abortion clinic is located, had asked Schlipper to reconsider her ruling.
Schlipper refused in a 14-page opinion issued on Tuesday, writing that Urmanski had failed to show how she misapplied state law or otherwise erred and declaring that the plaintiffs had won the case.
But she denied the doctors’ request for an injunction barring prosecutors from charging abortion providers. Prosecutors in Dane, Milwaukee and Sheboygan counties said they would abide by her ruling that state law permits consensual abortions, she noted.
“This is a major victory for reproductive freedom in Wisconsin, and we are prepared to defend this reproductive freedom victory as we move forward,” Kaul said.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin said in a statement on Tuesday that it expects to resume abortion procedures at its Sheboygan facility “as soon as possible”.
Anti-abortion groups are expected to appeal Schlipper’s ruling.