A Wisconsin judge was set to hear arguments Thursday in a lawsuit challenging the state's 174-year-old abortion ban, a statute held in abeyance for nearly five decades until the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade last year.
State Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, filed the lawsuit in Dane County circuit court last June seeking to repeal the ban. Kaul argues that the 1849 law is so old it was essentially adopted without the people's consent; or alternately, that narrower restrictions on abortion enacted in Wisconsin in 1985 supersede the older statute. The 1985 legislation permits terminating pregnancies up until a fetus can survive outside the womb, while the older law outlawed abortion except to save the mother’s life.
