News

By Gudrun Schultz

  MADISON, Wisconsin, June 1, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Partial birth abortion opponents in the Wisconsin Legislature have pledged to act quickly to bring the state ban on the procedure into line with the federal ban, after the Attorney General said it would likely not be enforceable as it stands.

  Assembly Speaker Mike Huebsch and Senate Minority Leader Scott Fitzgerald requested a legal opinion from Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen on the status of Wisconsin’s law against the late-term abortion procedure. Van Hollen issued an informal opinion Thursday, saying the state ban would likely remain unenforceable since it was based on a Nebraska ban that was struck down by the Supreme Court, the Associated Press reported earlier today.

  The Wisconsin ban would send doctors who perform the procedure to prison for life, with an exemption in cases where the woman’s life was in danger. The 1998 law was declared unconstitutional by a federal appeals court after the Nebraska law was struck down in 2000. Van Hollen said the Wisconsin ban’s definition of partial birth abortion was broader than that of the 2003 law signed by President Bush and upheld by the Supreme Court. The injunction issued by the court against the state law was unlikely to be lifted, Van Hollen said.

  Minority Leader Fitzgerald will now work to bring the Wisconsin ban into line with the Supreme Court ruling, spokesman Mike Prentiss said.  The Assembly will act quickly to make sure the state ban on partial birth abortions will go into effect, according to Huebsch’s spokesman Bob Delaporte.

  See related LifeSiteNews coverage:

  WISCONSIN AND ILLINOIS PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION BANS BLOCKED
  https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/1999/nov/99113003.html

  US APPEALS COURT UPHOLDS PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION BANS
  https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/1999/oct/99102704.html