Wisconsin Supreme Court to hear case to enshrine abortion rights in state Constitution

The Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed to hear a case from Planned Parenthood that would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state’s Constitution.

The court’s liberal majority handed down the order to hear the case. Last week, Wisconsin’s high court launched an investigation after Wisconsin Watch released the court’s decision to take up the case.

The case will ask the high court to rule that access to abortion is a right protected by the Wisconsin Constitution. It gives the court’s four-member liberal majority the opportunity to issue a ruling that would give sweeping protections for women’s reproductive rights.

Planned Parenthood’s argument is rooted in Article 1, Section 1, of the Wisconsin Constitution, which states, in part, that “all people are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights; among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

It argues the equal protection clause in the Wisconsin Constitution “encompasses the right to make one’s own decisions about reproductive health care, including whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term and a physician’s right to provide appropriate abortion care.”

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Laws enacted in 1849, the year after Wisconsin became a state, have been interpreted as outlawing abortion in all cases except to save the mother’s life. Abortion was outlawed in the state after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. In 2023, however, a Dane County judge ruled that the 1849 law did not, in fact, outlaw abortion, which promptly resumed abortion access in the state’s high population centers of Madison and Milwaukee. 

Oral arguments will likely happen when the court’s next term begins in the fall.