Contention over the state of Wisconsin’s pre-Roe law prohibiting abortion could soon be decided by the state’s Supreme Court, according to an Associated Press report.
Sheboygan County District Attorney Joel Urmanski, who is defending the pro-life statute § 940.04, filed a petition to bypass the lower courts and have the state’s Supreme Court rule on the matter. He stated in his brief that the case will have far-reaching impacts for the state, and will eventually end up at the Supreme Court. Thus, Urmanski argued, continuing appeals at the lower court level “will only result in unnecessary expenditures of judicial time and resources,” and “will needlessly delay resolution of a legal question of significant importance to the State.” According to the Associated Press, Urmanski’s filing states that Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul agrees that the Supreme Court should take up the case.
Planned Parenthood took advantage of the filing to request the court find the entire law unconstitutional, even though Wisconsin’s state constitution does not explicitly protect abortion.
The text of the law in question reads: “Any person, other than the mother, who intentionally destroys the life of an unborn child is guilty of a Class H felony.”
Attorney General Kaul initially challenged the statute days after the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, arguing at first that the 175-year-old law was superseded by other statutes enacted in the 1980s that permit abortion until the time of “viability,” an ever-shifting, unscientific point at which the baby is deemed able to live outside the womb.
In December, a Wisconsin judge reaffirmed an earlier ruling, issuing a summary judgment that the law did not apply to “consensual abortion,” but only to cases of feticide – cases in which a pregnant woman is physically attacked in order to kill her baby, Live Action News has reported. Urmanski has appealed this decision on the lower court level as well.
After the ruling, executive director of Wisconsin Right to Life Heather Weininger lamented that “A law that was enforced before the flawed decision of Roe is now one that pro-choice activists on the court are willing to use as a tool for their cause. Instead of providing true support for women and families in this post-Dobbs landscape, they are putting lives on the line.”
Without the 1849 pro-life protections in place, Planned Parenthood resumed committing abortions in Sheboygan later that same month, ending the 15 month respite of taking babies’ lives after the Dobbs decision.
The statute’s future before the Supreme Court seems uncertain after the election of the outspoken pro-abortion Justice Janet Protasiewicz in April of 2023, flipping the balance in favor of a liberal majority.
