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November 11, 2024 | By Benjamin Yount
Policy Issues
Culture

Wisconsin Attorney General: Legislature “Owes it to Wisconsin Voters” to Settle Abortion

Kaul said ultimately Wisconsin lawmakers will need to pass a new law to define abortion, regardless of how the court rules in the 1849 case.

Wisconsin’s attorney general says state lawmakers are ultimately going to have to write a new abortion law, but he’s not saying what he wants that law to be.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Monday heard arguments in the case involving Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion law.

Kaul’s office, along with Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, told the high court that the law doesn’t apply to “consensual abortions,” and cannot be enforced because lawmakers later adopted new regulations allowing for abortion up to 20 weeks.

“Assessing the intent of the legislature in passing other statutes that context is relevant,” Kaul told reporters after the hearing. “This is a question of what the statute means.”

Kaul said ultimately Wisconsin lawmakers will need to pass a new law to define abortion, regardless of how the court rules in the 1849 case.

“This is an area that we know is impacting the lives of Wisconsinites,” Kaul said. “Our legislature owes it to Wisconsin voters to address it, and to continue working to make progress.”

Kaul refused to say, however, what he thinks a new Wisconsin abortion law should include.

“I don't think that we can have simple, bright-line rules when it comes to these issues,” Kaul added. “I think we've got to make sure that we are not unduly burdening people's ability to access reproductive healthcare. Again, they're going to be a lot of circumstances that arise. Fundamentally, I think the approach we should have is one that's based on protecting the ability of women to make these reproductive healthcare decisions without the government interfering with their ability to do so.”

But Planned Parenthood Wisconsin’s Michelle Velasquez did have a list of things she’d like to see eliminated in a new abortion law.

“Wisconsin has a very very restrictive statutory scheme that makes it really challenging to provide [abortion] access across the state,” Velasquez explained. “Things like a telemedicine ban, a two-visit requirement, same physician requirement, physician only. Those are just a few of the regulations that make expansion extraordinarily challenging. But it's something that as an organization we're absolutely committed to [changing].”

Planned Parenthood also has a pending abortion case before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. That case asks the liberal-majority justices for a right to abortion in the state.

But Velasquez said that’s all they are asking for. She said Planned Parenthood doesn’t want the court to set the rules for abortion in Wisconsin.

“I don't think the court needs to reach a question of gestational age in the case before it right now, because Wisconsin does have a pretty comprehensive and robust statutory scheme related to when abortions can be performed.”

Wisconsin’s current abortion law allows abortions up to 20 weeks. Republican lawmakers have introduced updated versions, some of which have a shorter time frame, but none of those suggestions have become law.

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