The Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down the state’s abortion ban from 1849 on Wednesday.
The court’s liberal-leaning majority affirmed a lower court ruling overturning the abortion ban in a 4-3 decision. The court ruled that the ban was superseded by a more recent Wisconsin law that criminalizes abortions only after a fetus can survive outside the womb.
“We conclude that comprehensive legislation enacted over the last 50 years regulating in detail the ‘who, what, where, when, and how’ of abortion so thoroughly covers the entire subject of abortion that it was meant as a substitute for the 19th century near-total ban on abortion,” Justice Rebecca Frank Dallet wrote in the opinion Wednesday. “Accordingly, we hold that the legislature impliedly repealed [the 1849 ban] to abortion, and that [that law] therefore does not ban abortion in the State of Wisconsin.”
Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban made it a felony when anyone other than the mother “intentionally destroys the life of an unborn child,” and was in effect until 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision voided it, according to the Associated Press. Still, the abortion ban was never officially repealed, and some conservatives argued that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe effectively reactivated it, the AP reported.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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