Madison, WI – Today’s ruling by the Wisconsin Supreme Court in Kaul v. Urmanski, which invalidates the state’s historic 1849 law protecting unborn life from abortion, is a blatant act of judicial activism and a practice in bad legal reasoning.  

“This decision is nothing short of a judicial power grab. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has taken it upon itself to erase a law that elected representatives deliberately preserved for over 175 years—even while Roe v. Wade rendered it unenforceable. The majority abandoned sound legal reasoning in favor of political activism, mocking the very concept of judicial restraint. This is a betrayal of the rule of law and a devastating blow to the state’s longstanding commitment to protecting the most vulnerable,” reacted Andrew Bath, Executive Vice President and General Counsel at Thomas More Society.

“The majority’s reliance on ‘implied repeal’—a doctrine courts are supposed to apply sparingly—has no place here,” Bath continued. “There is no single statute that repealed the 1849 law. Instead, the Court stitched together a patchwork of later laws and declared that together they constitute an implied repeal. That’s not statutory interpretation; it’s legislating from the bench—an egregious violation of our constitutional system of separation of powers. This flies in the face of the fact that the legislature has amended—rather than repealed—the law several times over the years, including as recently as 2011. The dissents rightly expose the liberal majority’s brazen attempt to impose an ideological agenda through the courts.”

Bath also rejected the notion that Wisconsin’s more recent pro-life laws provide legal grounds for invalidating the 1849 statute: “Far from rendering the 1849 law obsolete, Wisconsin’s later legal protections for unborn life—such as bans after viability or on partial-birth abortion—work in harmony with it. They were enacted under the constraints of Roe, not to replace the older law but to regulate abortion to the extent permitted under the Roe framework until the day that Roe was finally overruled. Actual attempts in the legislature to repeal it were always beaten back so as to preserve the law in anticipation of the day Roe would fall.”

Thomas More Society affirms that the fight to protect unborn life in Wisconsin is far from over and pledges to continue standing with lawmakers, families, and advocates who are committed to restoring legal protections for the unborn and upholding the integrity of the law.