McIlheran, and echoed by Sykes, writes (emphasis mine):
But saying, "abortionists could be jailed" doesn't panic people into calling lawmakers, does it? So, apparently, Planned Parenthood has to lie. I guess they can; it's a free country. I just wish they wouldn't pollute the Journal Sentinel web site in doing so. Who needs their blood money?
I will resist the easy jab at who is really polluting the JS websites. But, as some of their commenters accurately point out, these ads pay their salaries. If McIlheran and Sykes feel that strongly about the issue, perhaps they should return their salaries during the time that these ads are running, unless they are perfectly content accepting their "blood money", even while complaining about it.
Esenberg is correct in that when two statutes directly conflict, as these two appear to do, courts will generally construe the earlier one as being invalidated, and therefore made unenforceable, by the later one.
ReplyDeleteBut it's possible -- and this is an extremely remote possibility, I reckon -- that a district attorney with a compelling argument made to a sympathetic court might be able to prosecute the 1859 statute.
So when PP says the State "could" enforce the old law, it's not quite "lying," but the suggestion is a highly unlikely one.
Of course all of this is contingent on the U.S. Supreme Court returning the abortion question entirely to the States, which itself seems pretty unlikely, at least for the immediate future.
The 1849 statute, that is.
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