July 2 (UPI) — Wisconsin’s Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a ruling that invalidated an 1849 state law banning nearly all abortions and said Wisconsin women will continue to have access to critical abortion-related health services.
The 4-3 ruling by the Democratic-controlled state supreme court upheld a December 2023 decision by Dane County Judge Diane Schlipper in Kaul v. Urmanski that says Wisconsin’s strict abortion law did not apply to voluntary abortions, but did to feticide.
Justice Rebecca Dallet argued in the court’s majority opinion that the state effectively repealed its own 176-year-old law when lawmakers passed additional laws that regulated abortion access in Wisconsin, which was backed up in the lawsuit by state Attorney General Josh Kaul.
Dallet said the case was about “giving effect to 50 years’ worth of laws passed by the legislature about virtually every aspect of abortion, including where, when, and how healthcare providers may lawfully perform abortions.”
But she added that the state’s legislature, “as the people’s representatives, remains free to change the laws with respect to abortion in the future.
Then-Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, later appointed as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2001-2005 under former President George W. Bush, told UPI in 1990 that he would sign a bill that mandates minors seek parental consent for an abortion.
But Wednesday’s ruling by the state’s high court now ends statewide uncertainty over the issue after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling struck down the nearly 50-year-old Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed a woman’s constitutional right to abortion.
However, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley, a member of its conservative minority, was critical of the court’s majority opinion.
On Wednesday, Bradley wrote that her colleagues erased “a law it does not like, making four lawyers sitting on the state’s highest court more powerful than the People’s representatives in the legislature.”
Notably, this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race saw national attention when then-White House DOGE adviser Elon Musk drew the ire of Kaul, the state’s chief law enforcement officer, after Musk directly got involved in a push to elect conservative Brad Schimel in the court race Musk said had the “destiny of humanity” at stake.
“Any remaining doubt over whether the majority’s decisions are motivated by the policy predilections of its members has been extinguished by its feeble attempt to justify a raw exercise of political power,” stated Bradley.
“The majority not only does violence to a single statute; it defies the People’s sovereignty,” she wrote.
