Why Progressive Prosecutors Won't Save Us in a Post-Roe World

[Nevilledog]

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/07/district-attorneys-prosecute-power-abortions-roe/

The same year Harriet Tubman escaped enslavement on a Maryland plantation and Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman ever to receive a US medical degree, three white men in the brand-new state of Wisconsin drafted a law to make abortion a felony. It was 1849, and at first, their law only criminalized doctors who ended pregnancies after “quickening,” when fetal movement could be felt. But nine years later, as the story goes, a Baptist minister-turned-doctor convinced state legislators to expand the ban, outlawing abortion at any point in pregnancy.

For nearly 50 years, that state law has gathered dust, made irrelevant by Roe v. Wade. But on June 24, when the Supreme Court upended decades of precedent and eliminated the national right to abortion, the old Wisconsin statute rose from the grave.

The resurrected law exempts abortion seekers from being charged with a crime, and it has a carveout for cases in which abortion is necessary to save a mother’s life. Instead, it targets healthcare providers: the doctors and clinic staff who help thousands of people end their pregnancies in Wisconsin every year. So on the 24th, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, which ran three of the state’s four abortion clinics, was faced with a perilous, long-anticipated question: Would their employees be arrested and jailed if they continued the work they’d been doing for decades?

There were so many factors to consider—including whether anyone would, or even could, enforce the ban. The elected prosecutors in Madison and Milwaukee, where two Planned Parenthood clinics are located, had pledged not to file charges against abortion providers, but future district attorneys might try to bring a case. So might private citizens, who could use the state’s unusual “John Doe” law to ask a judge to launch a criminal investigation. Wisconsin’s attorney general, Josh Kaul, had said his office wouldn’t support charges under the old ban, but he doesn’t have the power to stop local prosecutors from filing them. The Democratic governor, Tony Evers, had mentioned giving clemency to abortion providers. But he is up for reelection.

*snip*

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Could residents of Texas sue any out-of-state prosecutor for refusing to press charges

against a runaway resident seeking and obtaining an abortion?

[Nevilledog]

2. Prosecutorial immunity would bar that IMHO. Plus, no jurisdiction.