‘Deeply disappointing’: Pro-lifers double down after Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down state’s 176-year-old abortion ban

Wisconsin pro-lifers are vowing they won’t be “backing down” after the state’s high court struck down a 176-year-old abortion ban.

In a 4-3 ruling on Wednesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidated an 1849 law that banned abortion except to save the life of the mother. Though long dormant under Roe v. Wade, the ban snapped back into effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022. The near-total abortion ban was enforced for more than a year until a lawsuit from Wisconsin’s attorney general led to a circuit court decision that enabled providers to resume providing abortions.

Although the state Supreme Court’s decision on Wednesday struck down the ban, it stopped short of declaring a right to abortion or hindering future legislative action. “The legislature, as the peoples’ representatives, remains free to change the laws with respect to abortion in the future,” Justice Rebecca Dallet wrote in the majority’s opinion. 

Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers praised the court’s decision and called the abortion ban an “archaic 1800s-era statute drafted before the Civil War.” 

“Three years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court upended five decades of precedent and threw reproductive freedom in Wisconsin – and across our country – into chaos,” he said. “I promised then to fight like hell to ensure every Wisconsinite has the freedom to consult their family, their faith, and their doctor and make the reproductive healthcare decision that is right for them, and I’ve never stopped.” 

Wisconsin Right to Life Executive Director Heather Weininger said in a statement provided to The Lion that the court’s decision is “deeply disappointing” for those “who believe every human life has inherent value and deserves legal protection from the moment of conception.” 

“For over 175 years, Wisconsin’s 940.04 statute recognized that truth,” she added. “The court did not point to a single state statute that specifically repealed s. 940.04. To assert that a repeal is implied is to legislate from the bench.” 

Following the ruling, Wisconsin Right to Life is “more committed than ever to advancing a culture of life in our state,” she noted, and the group plans to work with state legislators and a grassroots network to strengthen pro-life positions in the state. “Even as the courts shift, our mission stays the same: to ensure that every life, born and unborn, is valued and protected.” 

In a scathing dissent, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler called the majority opinion a “jaw-dropping exercise of judicial will, placing personal preference over the constitutional roles of the three branches of our state government and upending a duly enacted law.”  

Justice Rebecca Bradley, in her dissent, also accused the majority of overstepping its judicial authority. 

“The majority erases 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. 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,” she wrote. 

Bradley also criticized Chief Justice Jill Karofsky for erasing history, slandering pro-life viewpoints, and insulting women by “referring to mothers as ‘pregnant people.’”