A Wisconsin circuit court judge has ruled that an 1849 law that classifies the destruction of a fetus by someone other than the mother as a felony does not outlaw abortions, returning the state’s abortion access to its pre-Dobbs status.
Dane County Circuit Court Judge Diane Schlipper on Tuesday reaffirmed a ruling she issued earlier this year, finding that an 1800s-era law “does not apply to consensual abortions, but to feticide.”
After the Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling in 2022, the question was raised over whether a Wisconsin state law passed in 1849 could go into effect. Roe had effectively invalidated the law when it was in effect.
Congrats, you’ve just passed every conservative’s wet dream, by not only making it harder to pass any new laws because you’re constantly going to be busy renewing the old ones, but also making it so that all you have to do in order to kill a policy you don’t like is to wait and do nothing.
Imagine if Republicans could kill Social Security by simply waiting and fillibustering in the Senate, and go on to blame Democrats because they technically have a majority.