(The Center Square) – The Wisconsin Supreme Court is set to rule on abortion.
The court announced that it would hear two challenges to Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion law, pending rulings by lower courts in the state.
“In accepting this case, this Court is doing what so many other state courts have done before and since Dobbs v. Jackson: considering state constitutional challenges to abortion laws. Deciding important state constitutional questions is not uncommon. That is the work of this Court,” Judge Jill Karofsky wrote in her order accepting the case.
A Wisconsin court is set to hear a challenge to a ruling by a Dane County judge who argues that the state’s law, which effectively bans abortion in Wisconsin, is about mothers who want to kill their unborn children and has nothing to do with doctors who perform abortions.
The court will also hear a request by Planned Parenthood to declare that there is a right to abortion in Wisconsin.
Michelle Velazquez, chief strategy officer for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, said she was grateful the court took up their case.
“Wisconsinites need and have the right to have this resolved in court. With continuing attacks on abortion, contraception, gender reassignment treatment, IVF and other reproductive health care, protecting access to abortion and protecting bodily autonomy is essential to ensuring everyone can make decisions about their reproductive health and lives,” Velazquez said in a statement.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Freedom is one of many groups that say a liberal-majority Supreme Court should let lawmakers decide state abortion issues.
“Wisconsin’s duly elected Legislature and Governor should be setting policies restricting abortion through the normal legislative process. Judges, magistrates and lawyers should not be creating policies out of thin air for the people of Wisconsin,” said WILL attorney Luke Berg. “Yet that’s what’s happening now. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has made a historic error by even considering its own case in this case.”
