CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Governor Tony Evers has filed a lawsuit against the state’s 1849 ban on abortion.
He argues that the law is so old and outdated that it can’t be justified the deny women the ability to end a pregnancy.
He’s wrong on several grounds. First, the oldness of a law doesn’t make it invalid. Wisconsin’s homicide law is one year older than the abortion ban. Our leaders decided that the taking of life would be banned. And one of the reasons for that law was to spell out penalties for taking a life. Murderers would get their day in court. There would not be the frontier justice of posses and hangings.
The biggest problem for the Ever’s lawsuit is not that the abortion ban is old, it’s that it was the law that Wisconsinites lived under for more than a century. Up to 1971, abortion was illegal in Wisconsin. There was no exception for rape or incest. Doctors who performed an abortion could be prosecuted. So, Governor Evers, during those 122 years, there were times when democrats controlled the governorship and the legislature – and didn’t change the law. Why didn’t they? And what about 2009 and 2010. For those two years the Roe v Wade ruling blocked Wisconsin’s abortion ban from being enforced. Jim Doyle, a democrat, was governor. And his party controlled both houses of the legislature. Repealing the 1849 law could have been the work of a few days, and pro-life Republicans could do nothing to stop it. They didn’t.
What’s the lesson? That the passing of laws, and the revising and changing of them, is this business of the legislature, not the courts. And now Governor Evers seeks to find a liberal court to accomplish what he can’t get done.
Chris Conley
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