Planned Parenthood Wants Permanent Injunction On Medical Abortion Restrictions

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin is asking a Dane County judge to permanently block a new state law that restricts how doctors administer pills used to induce medical abortions.

The law has been temporarily blocked since February 2013, when Planned Parenthood first filed suit to prevent Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen and the state medical examining board from enforcing it.

Planned Parenthood’s attorney Susan Crawford says the law places a burden on the 45 percent of women who choose a medical rather than a surgical abortion, because it requires a doctor to be present in the room with a woman when she ingests both of the pills necessary to induce the abortion.

“They get the first drug at the clinic,” said Crawford. “She actually ingests in front of the doctor. The other one she ingests 24 to 48 hours later.”

Crawford says the law carries criminal penalties if the doctor doesn’t comply and that will make clinics likely to offer medical abortions despite the fact that it’s less invasive than the surgical alternative, and just as safe.

“I mean it’s pretty hard to convince a doctor to carry out a procedure that might subject them to felony criminal penalties,” she said.

The state’s lawyers argue doctors shouldn’t worry about that because Van Hollen has signed an agreement with all 72 district attorneys in the state pledging not to prosecute doctors for violating that provision of the law. Crawford says Planned Parenthood isn’t convinced that agreement is binding.

“The state did not agree never to prosecute under these interpretations of the statute, regardless of what the state was saying in the courtroom today,” said Crawford. “That was not part of the agreement.”

Dane County Judge Richard Niess has 90 days to decide whether to continue blocking the law or allow it go into effect.