Richard Davis Provides Insight on State’s Abortion Law for Wisconsin Independent Article
Richard Davis, a Milwaukee-based Quarles & Brady partner in the Health & Life Sciences Practice Group, discussed the legal interpretation of the 1849 statute currently governing abortion law in Wisconsin in an article by The Wisconsin Independent.
The article dives into the implications related to state abortion law of the Wisconsin Supreme Court election between Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford and Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Brad Schimel. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in its 2022 Dobbs decision, an 1849 Wisconsin law went into effect and was used to prohibit abortion in the state.
The state Supreme Court election carries potentially significant implications for how the 1849 law is interpreted in abortion cases. Davis explained why it’s critical for medical professionals to fully document the need for an abortion. An excerpt:
Richard Davis, a Milwaukee attorney with the firm Quarles and Brady, said that while the law was being enforced as a ban on abortion, he advised his clients to meticulously document every case in which an abortion was required to save the life of the patient.
“The key there is medical documentation, making sure the physician involved in the procedure or ordering the procedure is able to clearly and accurately state why the procedure is necessary to save the life of the mother, and keeping thorough records of that,” Davis told the Wisconsin Independent.
“Just kind of thinking forward from that physician’s perspective, if the state were to try to bring a case here, having that clear documentation of saying, No, this was necessary to save the life of the mother in my medical judgment for X, Y and Z reasons, and the more clearly and effectively they could state that, the lower the liability here is under the statute.”
Davis said that if the 1849 law were to again be interpreted as an abortion statute as opposed to a feticide statute and be enforceable by the high court, his greatest legal concern is a lack of clear parameters guiding physicians in practice.
“From a legal perspective, there’s only so much we can say, this is what the law says, and it really does boil down to the physician’s medical judgment,” Davis said.