THE ROE EFFECT

Abortion played a decisive role in November. Now the battle moves to the courts.

- Madison Pauly

FOR THREE AND a half years, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers' veto pen was the only thing keeping his state's Republican legislators from getting everything on their anti-abortion wish list.

When they tried to ban abortion based on fetal anomalies, Evers was there to veto it. Block Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood? Evers vetoed that, too. And he shot down a bill that would have required doctors to tell patients they could reverse a medication abortion a claim the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says is "not based on science." Then the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Suddenly, the Wisconsin legislature didn't have to lift a finger.

State law appeared to automatically default to an 1849 statute that made performing abortions a felony, with no exceptions for rape or incest-only a narrow allowance to "save the life of the mother." The state's abortion clinics, afraid their doctors would be jailed, halted services virtually immediately.

Doctors began referring people out of state to get abortions and delaying care for pregnancy complications.

Around 3 in 5 Wisconsin voters support pregnant people's right to choose in all or most cases. But unlike next-door Michigan-where a coalition of progressive groups reacted to the Supreme Court ruling with a citizen-led ballot initiative to enshrine "reproductive freedom" in their state constitution-Wisconsin lacked a process to put the question directly to voters without prior approval from the GOP-led legislature.

Meanwhile, gerrymandering has kept the state Senate and Assembly under a Republican vise grip since 2010, despite Wisconsin's famously narrow political divisions. "Our representative democracy really is broken when it comes to translating the people's preferences and their voice at the ballot box into legislative seats," says Mel Barnes, staff counsel at Law Forward, a legal nonprofit focused on protecting Wisconsin's democratic process.