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A Dane County judge in September ruled the ban prohibits feticide — harming a woman in an attempt to kill her unborn child — but not abortion.

Making matters worse for Republicans, a Dane County judge ruled this past summer that Wisconsin’s 174-year-old ban on abortion prohibits feticide — an attempt to kill an unborn child — but not abortions.

Fortunately, a decision made by the Dane County Circuit Court in July 2023 clarified that the 1849 law was not enforceable for voluntary abortions, instead it was about banning feticide.

Ohio passed the nation’s first ban on what its lawmakers then dubbed “partial birth feticide” in 1995, just three years after Ohio physician Martin Haskell debuted the D&X procedure during an abortion practitioners conference.

The Indiana woman was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2015 after prosecutors used her web visit to the “National Abortion Federation: Abortion after Twelve Weeks” page to charge her with feticide.