Press Release Arizona
Memo
MEMO: Anti-Abortion Extremists Are Jumping Into WI Supreme Court Race. Here’s What You Need to Know
TO: Interested Parties
FROM: Reproductive Freedom for All
RE: Anti-Abortion Extremists Are Jumping Into WI Supreme Court Race. Here’s What You Need to Know
DATE: March 10, 2025
Last week, anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America’s Women Speak PAC announced that it will deploy student canvassers to get out the vote for Judge Brad Schimel in Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court race.
The anti-abortion group’s embrace of Judge Schimel comes as no surprise. Not only does he have a documented and extensive anti-abortion record, but the results of the race are set to have a tremendous impact on the fate of abortion access in the state.
Wisconsin has a total abortion ban on the books, enacted in 1849—more than a century before Roe v. Wade was decided. While that law is currently on hold as the case makes its way through the courts, the Wisconsin Supreme Court will likely hear it later this year.
In contrast to Schimel, Reproductive Freedom for All-endorsed candidate Judge Susan Crawford is a dedicated and experienced jurist who has spent her career defending reproductive freedom and protecting the rights of all Wisconsinites.
BRAD SCHIMEL’S ANTI-ABORTION RECORD
As the state’s attorney general, Judge Brad Schimel worked to undermine abortion rights at every turn, and if elected, he’ll continue to do so on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. As the New York Times reported (emphasis added):
“As attorney general, Judge Schimel helped map out a strategy to restrict abortion rights. And last summer, in the early stages of his campaign for the court, he told supporters he backed the state’s 1849 law banning abortion, which became valid when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The old law was put on hold in December 2023 and is likely to come before the state high court later this year.
‘They’ve got several issues in front of them,’ he told a crowd in Adams County, according to audio of the meeting shared with The New York Times. ‘One is the 1849 ban on abortions, which, by the way — what is flawed about that law?’
At another stop, in Chilton, Wis., Judge Schimel declared: ‘There is not a constitutional right to abortion in our State Constitution. That will be a sham if they find that.’”
As the state’s attorney general, Schimel also filed an amicus brief supporting targeted restrictions on abortion providers (TRAP laws) and said that he believes “life begins at conception”—language that, if inserted into law, would ban abortion, some forms of birth control, and assisted fertility treatments like IVF.
SBA Pro-Life America isn’t the only anti-abortion group that jumped into this race in recognition of Judge Schimel being an ally to their cause. Pro-Life Wisconsin told its supporters that the “easiest road” to enacting a total abortion ban in Wisconsin “will be to elect Brad Schimel to the state supreme court.”
THIS RACE COULD DETERMINE THE FATE OF WISCONSIN’S ABORTION BAN
The Wisconsin Supreme Court currently holds a majority supportive of abortion rights, but this race could change that—posing an urgent threat to reproductive freedom. The stakes for abortion rights and access in Wisconsin couldn’t be higher in this election.
Knowing that Wisconsin voters support abortion rights and vote for candidates who will recognize them as a constitutional right, Schimel has released an ad trying to cover up his anti-abortion views. But anti-abortion groups’ embrace of him is proof positive that he will continue to enforce his extreme views on the court should he be elected.
Schimel is right to fear that Wisconsin voters will reject his anti-abortion record. The race comes after voters in the state turned out en masse in April 2023 to elect Justice Janet Protasiewicz to the state court—flipping the court’s anti-abortion majority to one that recognized reproductive freedom for the fundamental right it is and showing the public’s unapologetic embrace of abortion rights in a post-Roe world.
Voters will take to the polls to cast their ballots in this race on April 1.
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For over 50 years, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and post-partum care, and paid family leave—for everybody. Reproductive Freedom for All is powered by its more than 4 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion.