The entrance to the Wisconsin Supreme Court chambers is seen inside the state Capitol in Madison, Wisconsin.Todd Richmond/AP

When Wisconsin voters flipped the ideological balance of the state’s supreme court in 2023, abortion was very much on their minds. Specifically, abortion opponents were arguing that with the demise of Roe v Wade the year before, the state’s 1849 near-total abortion ban—invalidated by Roe but never overturned by lawmakers, so still technically on the books—should go into effect. The Wisconsin Supreme Court would be the ultimate decider—and thanks to the retirement of a conservative justice, the court was evenly split along partisan lines, 3 to 3.

The race for the open seat between Democratic-aligned circuit judge Janet Protasiewicz and conservative former Supreme Court justice Daniel Kelly was hard-fought and, with over $45 million spent, the most expensive judicial race in US history to that point. The final vote left no doubts about voters’ mindset on abortion: Protasiewicz won by more than 11 percentage points. 

On Wednesday, the now liberal-leaning court did what voters had wanted and struck down the state’s 176-year-old “zombie” abortion law, which made it a felony for anyone other than........

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