A Republican prosecutor is asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to decide whether state law bans abortions before the case goes through any lower appellate courts.

A Republican prosecutor asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday to decide whether a 174-year-old state law bans abortion in the state without waiting for a ruling from a lower appellate court.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion, reactivated an 1849 law that conservatives have interpreted as banning abortion.

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, filed a lawsuit arguing that the law is too old to enforce and conflicts with a 1985 law permitting abortions before fetuses can survive outside the womb. Dane County Circuit Judge Diane Schlipper ruled in July that since the law doesn’t use the term “abortion,” it only prohibits attacking a woman in an attempt to kill her unborn child. The ruling emboldened Planned Parenthood to resume offering abortions in the state.

  • @[email protected]English
    18•9 months ago

    I hope ‘too old to enforce’ is just shitty writing by the press who can’t articulate something like ‘has been superceded by more recent litigation’.