Senate approves 20-week abortion ban bill

Listen to this article

By DANA FERGUSON
Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — After three hours of debate, the Wisconsin state Senate approved a bill Tuesday night that would ban non-emergency abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The bill’s supporters in the Republican-controlled Senate argued fetuses can feel pain after 20 weeks, while opponents contended the suffering for Wisconsin women would be greater if the measure advanced. The Senate approved it on a 19-14 vote on party lines, with Republicans voting in favor.

Under the proposal, doctors who perform an abortion after 20 weeks in non-emergency situations could be charged with a felony and subject to $10,000 in fines or 3-½ years in prison. The fetus’ father could also press charges against the physician. As written, the bill doesn’t provide exceptions for pregnancies conceived from sexual assault or incest.

Sen. Leah Vukmir, R-Wauwatosa, said Tuesday that passing the bill would prevent suffering during an abortion.

“It’s cruel to allow a baby and a mother to go through a process that inflicts that pain, ultimately ending a life,” Vukmir said. “How can we allow these abortions on 5-month-old babies?”

While the bill’s supporters and some doctors contend fetuses can feel pain after 20 weeks, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says evidence suggests that’s not possible until the third trimester begins at 27 weeks.

Sen. Jon Erpenbach, D-Middleton, argued that the bill disregards a mother’s health. The bill as written says a doctor cannot perform an abortion after 20 weeks unless the mother is likely within 24 hours to die or suffer irreversible impairment of one or more of the woman’s major bodily functions.

“The mother basically has to be knocking on death’s door for the doctor … to legally feel he’s OK to focus on the life of the mother,” Erpenbach said. “You’re going to take a doctor who makes a decision and you’re going to make him a felon.”

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Tuesday that the Assembly could take up the abortion bill later this month or in the fall. He said Assembly Republicans had not yet discussed the measure, but he supported it.

“The bill as it’s drafted, I think, has a lot of merit,” Vos said at a news conference. “I do not certainly support the idea of allowing unborn children who feel pain to be aborted inside the womb.”

Vos said it would be worthwhile to spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars defending the law in court from expected federal lawsuits challenging its constitutionality.

“Protecting life is something that we shouldn’t necessarily just put a price tag on,” Vos said.

Gov. Scott Walker has said he would sign the bill.

According to the most recent information from the state Department of Health Services, roughly 1 percent of abortions in Wisconsin in 2013 occurred after the 20-week mark — 89 of nearly 6,500 abortions performed that year.

Fourteen states have passed bans at 20 weeks or earlier, which depart from the standard established by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. That ruling established a nationwide right to abortion but permitted states to restrict the procedures after the point of viability — when a fetus could viably survive outside the womb under normal conditions. If offered no legal definition of viability, saying it could range from the 24th to the 28th week of pregnancy.

Courts have blocked bans in Georgia, Idaho and Arizona. Litigation in other states is ongoing.

Associated Press reporter Scott Bauer also contributed to this report.