The Wisconsin Supreme Court was listening to the discussion during a review hearing at the State Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin on November 21, 2023. The court decided on Wednesday, July 2, 2025 that the state’s 176 law would not prohibit abortion.
Ruthie Hauge/AP/Pool Capital Time
Hide captions
Toggle caption
Ruthie Hauge/AP/Pool Capital Time
Milwaukee – Reproductive rights supporters are celebrating their victory in Wisconsin. After years of lawsuits Law of 1849 Conservatives argue that it criminalizes state abortion, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the law does not ban abortion.
This means abortions can continue in the state.
It marks the end of the saga, when it began Roev. Wade It was overturned in 2022 and ended the protection of the federal constitution for abortion. It was clear that abortions would be banned and other states would be protected, but Wisconsin was found to be in a legally grey area.
Due to the law of 1849, state abortion providers stopped providing procedures. However, Democrat Attorney General Josh Caul sued at the time, challenged the law, and the question of how to interpret the law of 1849 had been in court since June 2022.
In December 2023, the court found that the law did not prohibit abortion and was actually a fetish law that would make attacking and killing women’s children illegal without consent. Since that ruling, people have been able to undergo an abortion in Wisconsin for up to 20 weeks if necessary to save their mother’s life and health. The law was passed in the 1980s..
Arbitration, objections and the next
On Wednesday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the law would not prohibit abortion. The court had a 4-3 liberal majority, which was maintained after some A highly publicized and highly funded election For open seats in 2023 and 2025.
In that ruling, the majority found that the Wisconsin legislature functionally repealed the 1849 law by a subsequent law regulating abortion. “We conclude that over the past 50 years, comprehensive laws regulate “who, what, where, when, how.”
In his dissent, conservative Judge Annette Ziegler wrote that “the majority choose and choose which abortion laws are in effect,” calling the opinion “an exercise to drop the jaws of the will of the judicial.”
The court also recognized the case as separate from Wisconsin’s planned custody, which the law argued was prohibited and unconstitutional, but did not order any oral arguments. Planned Parenthood assumed that 176 years ago law was at odds with the provisions of the state constitution. Constitutional questions will not be resolved, according to Brina Godard, a staff lawyer for the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
“So I think there will be a continuous conversation about what constitutional protections are in Wisconsin,” Godard says. She says it could be a question for a future trial or constitutional amendment vote.
Now citizens There’s no way Constitutional amendments will begin via Wisconsin’s voting measures. Only the council can do that. Wisconsin now has a divided government consisting of GOP-controlled Congress and Democratic governors. Therefore, it will be rare for Congress to begin voting questions to establish constitutional protections for abortion within the next year. Conversely, the Democratic governor will not sign an additional ban on the law.
But this could all change for many state legislative seats and governor’s offices to get after the 2026 midterm elections in Wisconsin.
