Wisconsin Top Court to Decide on State Abortion Protections (1)

The Wisconsin Supreme Court will determine if the state constitution protects a right to abortion and review whether a state 19th century feticide law criminalizes elective procedures.

The justices on Tuesday granted Sheboygan County District Attorney Joel Urmanski’s petition to bypass the normal appellate process and hear the feticide statute case directly.

They limited the questions to those raised in Urmanski’s petition—whether the 1849 law prohibits performing consensual abortions, whether state lawmakers impliedly repealed or superseded it, whether it is unconstitutionally vague, and whether state agencies had standing to challenge the law, the justices said in their brief order.

The ...