MADISON, WI (AP)— Wisconsin's Democratic attorney general has filed a lawsuit seeking to block the state's 173-year-old ban on abortions.
Wisconsin adopted statutes in 1849 banning doctors from performing abortions unless the mother's life is in danger. The U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Roe v. Wade decision invalidated the ban, but the court's decision last Friday to reverse Roe v. Wade has created questions about whether the ban is in effect.
Attorney General Josh Kaul filed a lawsuit in Dane County court Tuesday arguing that a 1985 law that allows abortions up to the point of a fetus' viability supersedes the 1849 ban. He says that means abortions are still legal in Wisconsin before that point in a pregnancy.
