MADISON, Wisconsin — A Wisconsin judge on Tuesday reaffirmed her ruling from earlier this year that the state’s law allows consensual medical abortions, handing abortion rights advocates a massive victory but opening up appellate options for conservatives.
The US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that legalised abortion, in June 2022 reinstated an 1849 Wisconsin law that conservatives interpreted as banning abortion. Abortion providers ceased operations in the state for fear of violating the ban.
Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit challenging the validity of the ban days after the U.S. Supreme Court decision. He argued that the laws were too old to enforce and that a 1985 law allowing abortions before fetuses can survive outside the womb trumped the ban. Three doctors later joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs, saying they feared being prosecuted for performing abortions.
Dane County Circuit Judge Diane Schlipper ruled last July that the ban prohibits someone from assaulting a woman with the intent to kill her unborn child, but doesn’t apply to consensual medical abortions. Her ruling didn’t formally end the lawsuit, but Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin was confident enough in the ruling to resume abortions at its clinics in Madison and Milwaukee in September.
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 have said they will abide by her ruling that state law permits consensual abortions, she noted.
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”.
Urmanski’s attorney, listed in online court records as Andrew Phillips, didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Kaul called the ruling a “momentous victory.”
“Freedom wins. Equality wins. Women’s health wins,” he said in a statement.
The legal battle is likely far from over. Tuesday’s ruling opens the door for conservatives to appeal, and a case of this magnitude is likely to end up before the Supreme Court. Liberal justices currently control the court, so Schlipper’s ruling is likely to stand.