
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin
Allison Linton.
Dr. Allie Linton no longer needs to travel to Illinois to provide abortion care for her Wisconsin patients. “I’m glad we’ve been able to remove that medically unnecessary step in providing the care that they need.”
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin will continue offering abortion services in Madison and Milwaukee despite a call Tuesday from anti-abortion groups in Wisconsin for district attorneys in Dane and Milwaukee counties to enforce the state’s 1849 criminal abortion ban.
“Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin follows all applicable laws and regulations in providing all of its healthcare services,” Planned Parenthood legal advocacy director Michelle Velasquez says in a Sept. 27 statement to Isthmus. The abortion statute is not applicable to abortion care, she adds. “There is nothing to enforce.”
The group suspended abortion services in late June 2022, following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that overruled Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that provided a constitutional right to abortion. It resumed abortion services following a preliminary ruling in July by Dane County Judge Diane Schlipper who said that the 1849 law that anti-abortion groups are asking to be enforced bans feticide, not abortion. “There is no such thing as an ‘1849 abortion ban’ in Wisconsin,” wrote the judge.
At a Sept. 26 news conference, anti-abortion groups accused Planned Parenthood of breaking the law by resuming abortions at the Madison and Milwaukee clinics and called for providers and anyone helping them to be charged with a crime.
Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne and Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm have both said that they will not prosecute abortion providers under the 1849 law.
Dr. Allie Linton, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin’s associate medical director, spent the past year traveling between clinics in Madison, Milwaukee, and Waukegan, Illinois, to help Wisconsin residents access abortion care across state lines. Every Thursday, and sometimes on other days, she and a group of 10 to 20 Wisconsin Planned Parenthood staff drove from Wisconsin down to the Waukegan clinic, just as many patients did.
“It was really powerful, because the majority of patients we saw in Waukegan were from Wisconsin themselves,” says Linton. A bit of familiarity could be comforting for Wisconsin patients traveling to Illinois. “When we were able to tell them we also drove from Wisconsin, it was just this bond and realization that we were all in this together.”
Sometimes Wisconsin patients would go to a Wisconsin clinic for a counseling appointment or ultrasound, travel to Waukegan for an abortion, then have a follow-up appointment back in Wisconsin. Some who showed up in Waukegan for their procedure would be referred back to Wisconsin for additional medical tests and examinations before having to travel back to Waukegan again. “I’m glad we’ve been able to remove that medically unnecessary step in providing the care that they need,” says Linton.
Since resuming services in Madison and Milwaukee, demand has been high, says Linton, who is now working mostly in Madison. “Our schedules have been full and we’ve had very high show rates. Some of the patients had appointments in Illinois, then switched their appointments to be in Wisconsin once they knew that was an option.”
Staff is still shuffling between clinics, sometimes daily. “It’s still a working puzzle,” says Linton, “figuring out where the needs are between Milwaukee and Madison. We are trying to navigate that and adapt to demand as we see it.” Planned Parenthood also operates about two dozen other clinics around the state that provide other healthcare services, including cancer screenings.
Though the organization is confident about the current legality of providing abortion care, future court decisions or legislation could still cause the two clinics to halt abortion care again.
“We all train to make decisions based on medical risk and medical benefit. There’s this weird graying of the lines between healthcare and legality in a way that I think is new to most of us who work in medicine,” Linton says. “Now all of us are constantly waiting to see what is going to change in the legislative landscape.”
Velasquez discussed the next steps in the lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion statute at a Sept. 26 virtual town hall meeting of Planned Parenthood supporters.
She said that if the physicians who intervened in the case succeed in obtaining a permanent injunction barring enforcement of the 1849 law, it is expected that Sheboygan County District Attorney Joel Urmanski would appeal that decision.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin president and CEO Tanya Atkinson noted that she would like to get rid of the legal uncertainty and keep state lawmakers from making frequent changes to abortion law. “We really want a way to protect abortion from a state constitutional perspective,” she said.