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Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Daniel KellyChannel 3000 / YouTube

(LifeSiteNews) — Wisconsinites will go to the polls today to vote in a nonpartisan primary for an impending vacancy on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which is likely to determine the fate of the Dairy State’s newly-enforceable abortion ban.

Incumbent conservative Justice Patience Roggensack is retiring when her term expires on July 31, and four judges are running to succeed her: conservatives Jennifer Dorow and Daniel Kelly, and liberals Everett Mitchell and Janet Protasiewicz. The top two vote-getters in Tuesday’s election will face off in a general election on April 4.

Pro-Life Wisconsin and Wisconsin Family Action have both endorsed Kelly, citing his avowed textualist philosophy and his previous tenure on the state’s highest court. “If an activist were to win next April, Wisconsin’s public policy would be imposed by four lawyers sitting in Madison instead of being adopted through our constitutional processes,” Kelly has said. “I won’t let that happen on my watch.”

Allies of Protasiewicz, by contrast, are peppering the Wisconsin airwaves with television ads primarily focused on her support for legal abortion, which is expected to play a significant role in the outcome, given the vacancy will determine whether the Court maintains or flips its 4-3 conservative-leaning majority.

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last June, it allowed scores of state pro-life laws across the country to be enforced for the first time in nearly half a century. Among them was 940.04, a law dating back to 1849 that makes it a felony for an abortionist (but not a pregnant mother) to commit an abortion for any reason other than to save the mother’s life.

Wisconsin Democrat Gov. Tony Evers has threatened to give clemency to any abortionist prosecuted under the law, and Democrat Attorney General Josh Kaul says he will not prosecute anyone who violates it (both men won re-election to their current offices last November). But the threat of the law being enforced by lower levels of government has still gotten Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin to suspend abortions until the legal landscape changes.

Evers and Kaul also filed a legal challenge to the law, claiming that modern state laws effectively cancel it out and that it was too old to have the consent of current Wisconsinites (a premise that, if adopted, would have drastic ramifications for all corners of American law). 

The fate of that challenge will most likely hinge on the outcome of the Supreme Court race, and whether liberals or conservatives are more motivated to turn out to vote.

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