Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin announces it will stop performing abortions in anticipation of Dobbs ruling

Joining a handful of other states, Planned Parenthood’s Wisconsin locations will halt abortions after June 25 as the nation waits for a decision by the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health–the only case in 30 years to challenge Roe v. Wade.

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Quick Facts

• The Dobbs decision is expected to be released this week or next, and is likely to be consistent with the early-May draft leak.
• In the event of a Roe overturn, Wisconsin’s pre-Roe abortion ban, which dates back to the 19th century, will go into immediate effect.
• Planned Parenthood clinics in South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Alabama have also halted abortions.

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Allie Linton, associate medical director at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, said, “We are anticipating that the ruling will likely come before the end of June, so we are not scheduling our typical day one/day two procedures after June 25^th.”

An 1849 law bans abortion in Wisconsin except when the life of the mother is in danger. The law will go into effect if the Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the infamous 1973 decision which voided all existing state abortion restrictions and bans.

Wisconsin’s Gov. Tony Evers has said he wants to keep abortion legal. He asked Democrats in the state legislature to repeal the ban, but his request was met with resistance from Republican lawmakers. Attorney General Josh Kaul has said he won’t enforce the law if it goes into effect.

Tanya Atkinson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, said, “We’re looking at all our legal options that are available. We also have to look at the landscape of who is making decisions in Wisconsin, and what we want is to ensure abortion access in Wisconsin forever.”

Under current Wisconsin law, mothers must have an appointment to receive an ultrasound and then wait 24 hours to have an abortion. Planned Parenthood will continue to hold first appointments where they may attempt to find their patients an out-of-state clinic where they can have the abortion performed.

Linton said it feels “horrendous” to have to stop abortions. “It just feels devastating, to know that I could help someone, and that would be the medical right thing to do — that would be what my training told me to do, and taught me to do — but that I have to deny that service.”

She added, “Obviously if we are wrong and the ruling has not come out on the 27th, we will try to open up schedules and do the best that we can to get people in. Or if we’re wrong and the ruling says something different, then we will open up schedules galore.”

Wisconsin is the latest state in which Planned Parenthood has met a barrier. According to far left outlet Jezebel, Planned Parenthood stopped providing abortions in Alabama in April and has not restarted, and with the state’s also having had a pre-Roe ban in place, Planned Parenthood is unlikely to resume its abortion operations.

Planned Parenthood has also stopped abortions in Oklahoma following the state’s ban on abortion, as well as in South Dakota. After a review prompted by the likely overturning of Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood also announced it will close ten facilities in Idaho, including its affiliate in Boise, the only of its Idaho clinics that performs surgical abortions.

While other clinics in some of the aforementioned states continue to perform abortions, Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider, performs 40 percent of all medical and surgical abortions each year.

As a workaround to state abortion bans, Planned Parenthood is expected to send mothers to other states, but reports indicate that if initially prevented from having an abortion, most women will choose to give birth rather than travel.

The closure of a Planned Parenthood clinic, or any abortion operation, is something to celebrate.

For many years, pro-life advocates have hoped and prayed for the end of abortion, and while a rectifying of the Supreme Court’s travesty is just the first major beachhead in a new battle, it shows what life could be like soon. Over 20 states are expected to ban abortion and others will restrict them severely, meaning that tens of thousands of lives could be saved if the Supreme Court rules as expected.

If Planned Parenthood cared about women, they’d promote motherhood and encourage and assist women on their journey to becoming a mom. Instead, you get chilling comments like those from Linton who ghoulishly celebrate abortion and are devastated at the prospect of having to stop the procedures.

In our culture, abortion advocates would have told both of these women to avoid the grief and adversity altogether by killing their babies before birth. Unfortunately, many mothers today buy into the idea that a child is a drag on their own potential happiness. Thus, too many mothers today are not only unwilling to take care of their own baby, but they are unwilling to let the child live and be adopted by a loving family.

There is clearly a deep spiritual void in our age when mothers no longer want children and have little concern for the well-being of their own child.

It is up to Christians to teach the world about the innate value of children and God’s love for each one of them — and why choosing life, even under less than ideal circumstances, is always the best possible course for both the child and the mother.