Slate Delves into Judge Posner's Opinion in Wisconsin Abortion Case

Wisconsin’s Abortion Law Is Unconstitutional

Judge Richard Posner, writing for a divided 2–1 panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled in an opinion filed on Monday that Wisconsin’s 2013 law requiring all abortion providers to obtain admitting privileges at nearby hospitals is unconstitutional. Admitting privileges are one of the two issues the Supreme Court agreed a little more than a week ago to decide when it accepted a challenge to Texas’ omnibus abortion statute HB 2.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, Wisconsin is one of 14 states that have required similar admitting privileges. Such provisions have been declared unconstitutional in six of those states. Posner, appointed to the 7th Circuit by Ronald Reagan, and long considered one of the most important conservative legal thinkers in the country, had already voted in this same case, in 2013, to keep an emergency injunction in place, finding the medical evidence for the admitting privileges requirement “lacking.” Posner has also criticized the Supreme Court in Slate for striking down a Massachusetts law that kept abortion protesters away from abortion seekers attempting to enter clinics.

The Wisconsin law was passed on Friday, July 5, 2013 and required compliance by the following Monday, July 8—in effect, affording doctors performing abortions one weekend to obtain admitting privileges at hospitals within a 30-mile radius. Planned Parenthood and Affiliated Medical Services filed suit, claiming that the new rule would force Affiliated’s clinic in Milwaukee to shut down altogether because doctors couldn’t get admitting privileges and that the burden on the remaining clinics would be extreme. An injunction kept the law from going into effect, and this past March, after a trial, U.S. District Judge William Conley found the law unconstitutional, writing that the law served no legitimate health interest. The state appealed, arguing that the statute protects the health of women who experience complications from an abortion. This case was argued at the court of appeals in October. Judge Daniel Manion was the lone dissenter, finding that the law genuinely protects women’s health and doesn’t amount to an undue constitutional burden.

Read more at Slate