Last week, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and their allies won a big victory when the state Department of Justice agreed to cover their legal costs for a years-long battle over the state’s hospital admitting privileges for abortion providers. Wisconsin’s 2013 law, part of a national wave of targeted regulation of abortion provider (TRAP) laws intended to shut down abortion clinics and undermine Roe v. Wade, was on shaky legal ground from the beginning. Nevertheless, Gov. Scott Walker, then seeking re-election as governor and hoping to launch a presidential campaign, signed and championed the law to appeal to the most socially conservative members of his very right-wing, religious base.
Wisconsin’s law was declared unconstitutional twice before the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear it and struck down a similar Texas law in June. Now, after clogging up our courts with its defense of this punitive law, the state has agreed to pay $1.6 million in legal fees for Planned Parenthood and the other plaintiffs.
Frankly, Walker isn’t the only guilty party in this case. Also responsible for this legal debacle are Attorney General Brad Schimel, who has set up a right-wing law firm within the taxpayer-funded Wisconsin State Department of Justice simply to push the Walker/Schimel extremist, undemocratic agenda in the courts, as well as the Republican legislators who are fixated on eliminating a woman’s control of her fertility, even when a pregnancy threatens her life. Shame on all of them for using our respected democratic institutions to wage a war on women and waste our limited tax dollars on obviously unconstitutional legislation in order to fuel their own political ambitions.
