Category: State news

Quoted: David Canon, political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said there are only eight to 10 states, including Wisconsin, that have the power to determine the outcome of the election.

“We’re one of the handful of so-called battleground states which are always in play during a presidential election,” Canon said.

Quoted: “Bills such as these are pure inflammatory rhetoric,” said Alta Charo, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of law and bioethics who supports broad access to abortion. “Any baby born alive is granted equal protection of the law from the moment of birth, and thus is covered by child abuse statutes, homicide statutes and any other law that guards children from harm.

“These bills (are offered) merely to create the false impression that abortion providers practice infanticide,” Charo said.

Retired UW-Madison political science professor Donald Downs, who specializes in constitutional issues, said he didn’t know whether the proposal includes protections already in state law but said once a baby is born, the state has an interest in providing them.

“Clearly, if you have a baby outside of the womb, that would seem to be a clear case the state has an interest in protecting the rights of the baby,” Downs said. “If indeed this is redundant, then there’s no need for it, but I don’t know what the previous protection is.

“The law protects you when you’re born — you’re a person,” he added.

Quoted: Jennifer Murphy is a program coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She’s been teaching for the past 21 years, and now has a class with only four students in it who want to become teachers.

Murphy’s small classroom is a representation of the bigger issue across the state: a teacher shortage.

“I can vividly remember having to sift through applicant upon applicant for jobs and now, we have jobs that go unfilled,” Murphy said.

Quoted: The court is expected to rule in those cases by the time Wisconsin’s trial begins in July. UW-Madison Political Science Professor Barry Burden says those rulings could have an impact on the state’s case.

“If the court for example, were to rule in a majority opinion that the Maryland and North Carolina districts should be redrawn in some way because they violated some constitutional rights, that might lead to a remedy being proposed in Wisconsin without a full trial. If the Supreme Court instead issues a kind of mishmash of different opinions without a clear majority on one side or the other, the trial might go forward trying to resolve some issues that didn’t come up in the Supreme Court opinions,” he says.