A bill introduced on Monday would grant Devil's Lake State Park the rights to "flourish, evolve, and be clean." (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

To celebrate Indigenous People’s Day, Democrats in the Wisconsin Assembly announced a package of bills Monday that would grant rights to Devil’s Lake State Park and reinstitute a law that effectively banned mining. 

The proposal to grant “rights of nature” to Wisconsin’s most popular state park comes just months after a group of Republicans introduced legislation that would prevent local governments in the state from enacting similar legislation. The Milwaukee County Board passed a rights of nature resolution promising to protect the Menominee, Milwaukee and Fox rivers and Lake Michigan. The Green Bay city council is also currently working on a rights of nature resolution. 

Under the bill, Devil’s Lake has the right to “flourish, evolve, and be clean.” The bill gives the state attorney general the authority to enforce the law against people who infringe on the park’s rights and allows anyone to sue or intervene in a lawsuit in the name of the park to enforce the park’s rights. Anyone who infringes on the park’s rights by damaging the environment will be liable to pay damages to restore the park to its previous state. 

In addition to the Devil’s Lake bill, the package includes a joint resolution acknowledging that “nature has inherent rights” and the state of Wisconsin “has a duty to uphold those rights as part of its enduring conservation legacy and its responsibility to future generations.” 

The resolution also states that the Legislature won’t pass laws preventing local rights of nature ordinances.

The Republican bill preempting local rights of nature efforts is “anti-free speech, it’s anti-democratic,” Rep. Vincent Miresse (D-Stevens Point), one of the bills’ co-authors, told the Wisconsin Examiner. “Whereas our bill is, ‘Hey, let’s get this on the docket and actually have a productive conversation, actually bring in stakeholders about what it means to look at nature actually having rights.’”

Miresse said the more symbolic measures passed by local governments are important statements of values, but he wanted the bill to have “teeth.” 

“I would like to move beyond mission and vision statements. I think those are great for guiding principles and taking us in the right direction and keeping our mission and vision top of mind when we are creating and drafting policy at the local level. And I want to make sure they have a right to do that regardless of what the preemption bill would do,” Miresse said. “However, when we were looking at this in terms of crafting policy and changing statute, there would be some teeth here.”

Miresse said the bill is targeted only at Devil’s Lake, rather than all the bodies of water in Wisconsin, because it was simplest to start with a piece of nature that has defined political boundaries already under the state’s control. 

In their preemption bill, Republicans Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) and Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) argued that laws granting rights to nature posed a “dangerous shift in legal precedent” that would result in “threatening property rights, stalling development, and burdening the judicial system.”

Democrats counter that granting legal rights to a park or a body of water isn’t much different than granting First Amendment rights to a corporation — which Republicans successfully argued for in court cases such as Citizens United. 

Also announced Monday is a proposal to reinstate Wisconsin’s “prove it first” mining law, which requires that in order to obtain a permit from the Department of Natural Resources, mining companies must prove the mine can be operated for 10 years and be shuttered for 10 years without harmful effects on the local environment. The law was enacted in 1997 until Republicans repealed it in 2017. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, authored the bill to repeal the mining ban when he was in the state Senate. 

This year, a Canadian company has begun exploratory drilling projects in the state, potentially leading to the first operating mines in Wisconsin for the first time in decades. 

Miresse said he wants decisions about mining to consider local environmental health rather than just being about “dollars and cents.”

“We don't have a direct way to overrule what the Republican regime has done in the big, ugly bill,” Sen. Kelda Roys said. “We certainly can do everything we can in Wisconsin to make sure that the existing two independent clinics that provide abortion services are able to see as many patients as they possibly can." (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin paused abortion services Wednesday at its Madison, Milwaukee and Sheboygan locations due to the megabill signed by President Donald Trump in July. The law — officially titled the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act — included a provision that would take away federal funding from the organization if it continues providing abortion services. 

The organization announced the pause last week, saying that it was looking to see as many patients as possible before the Oct. 1 deadline. Wisconsin is the first state in the country where Planned Parenthood has taken this step in response to the federal law. 

In reaction, Democratic lawmakers called Wednesday morning for the state to reverse other restrictions on the books to help increase accessibility to the remaining independent abortion providers in the state.

“We’re sounding the alarm, but we’re also saying we can do something about this,” Rep. Lisa Subeck (D-Madison) said at a press conference. “We know that this is going to be a legal battle, and there will be other means by which Planned Parenthoods are fighting this change, but in the meantime, we cannot let Republicans block access for Wisconsin women to the care that they need.” 

This is the second time that Planned Parenthood is halting abortion services in Wisconsin since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, ending federally protected abortion rights. The group stopped providing abortions from June 2022 until September 2023, when a Dane County court held that a 19th century state statute did not ban abortions. The Wisconsin Supreme Court also ruled in July that the same 19th century law was invalid and unenforceable and had effectively been repealed by other laws passed after it. 

Planned Parenthood’s decision to pause services again leaves just two independent clinics that provide abortion care in Milwaukee. Abortion providers in neighboring Illinois have declared that they are prepared to provide services for Wisconsin women.

“We know that people in Wisconsin can go to other states that do not have these restrictions to access abortion care, but we think that that’s unacceptable, and that no matter who you are or where you’re from you deserve the freedom to get the health care that you need here in Wisconsin,” Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said at the press conference.

The public health department for Madison and Dane County offered to help patients in need of services navigate their limited options. 

“Losing Planned Parenthood clinics as an option for abortion care means the full spectrum of reproductive health care will become very difficult to access in Wisconsin,” said Public Health Supervisor Sarah Hughes. “We know this changing landscape can be confusing and overwhelming, that’s why our Nurse Navigators are standing by to help people understand all options around pregnancy and reproductive health care.”

Planned Parenthood has been able to use federal funds via Medicaid payments and Title X, a federally funded family planning program, to help provide services other than abortion care, including contraceptives, STI testing, pregnancy testing, and gynecological services to low-income and uninsured individuals. The Hyde Amendment has barred federal money from being used to fund abortion care across the country for decades. 

The new federal law puts the other services that Planned Parenthood offers at risk by barring Medicaid payments for one year for organizations that received more than $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements in fiscal year 2023 and primarily engage in family planning services and reproductive health and provide abortions.

“This was targeted directly at Planned Parenthood,” Subeck said. 

“Let me be clear, Republicans in the federal and state governments will stop at nothing short of a full abortion ban,” she added.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its member organizations in Massachusetts and Utah filed a legal challenge in July, but an injunction that was blocking the law from taking effect was lifted in September.

Attorney General Josh Kaul has also joined with other state attorneys general on a legal motion that argues the provision “impermissibly and unconstitutionally targets Planned Parenthood health centers for their advocacy and their exercise of associational rights” and also that “Congress ran afoul of limits on its spending power” because of its ambiguity. It argues the provision “fails to adequately define the scope of providers who qualify as “prohibited entities”; fails to provide clear notice of the timing of its implementation; and constitutes a change that [states] could not have anticipated when joining Medicaid.” 

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin has said that ongoing litigation could change what the organization is allowed to do and that it  will continue to monitor the legal landscape and will be prepared to act the moment it is able to resume care.

Roys and Subeck introduced legislation Wednesday to help the last two clinics in Milwaukee take in patients. 

The Democratic bill would repeal several of the other restrictions on the books in Wisconsin, including a requirement that patients attend two appointments with the same physician 24 hours apart before receiving care, requirements that a patient have a physical exam and that a physician be physically present when medication is taken, and a requirement for an ultrasound. It would expand the number of providers allowed to provide abortion care from just physicians to physician assistants, nurse practitioners and advanced practice registered nurses. 

The lawmakers said the bill would help the two independent Milwaukee clinics — Care for All Community Clinic and Affiliated Medical Services — reach as many patients as possible while Planned Parenthood no longer offers services by removing barriers to providing access. 

“We don’t have a direct way to overrule what the Republican regime has done in the big, ugly bill,” Roys said. “We certainly can do everything we can in Wisconsin to make sure that the existing two independent clinics that provide abortion services are able to see as many patients as they possibly can and try to absorb some of the loss of service [provided by] Planned Parenthood, and open the door to make sure that patients in Wisconsin don’t suffer access restrictions that patients in other states don’t have to suffer.” 

Roys said the purpose of the restrictions “has always been to make abortion as onerous and as difficult for people to access as possible. It has nothing to reduce the need for abortion.” By lifting the restrictions, she said, the bill could help “increase abortion access, despite the federal backdoor abortion ban.”

However, in a Republican-led Legislature, the bill is unlikely to move ahead.

Conservative groups and some Republican lawmakers celebrated the news of the pause in abortion services last week. Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) called the pause in services at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin a “hopeful moment” in a statement last week.

“Every heartbeat silenced by abortion was a life full of possibility,” Goeben said. “This pause means more of those lives may now have a chance.”

Goeben and 11 of her Republican colleagues recently introduced a bill that seeks to narrow the definition of  abortion in Wisconsin. According to a bill summary, it would amend the definition of abortion to make an exception for “physician’s performance of a medical procedure or treatment designed or intended to prevent the death of a pregnant woman and not designed or intended to kill the unborn child, including an early induction or cesarean section performed due to a medical emergency or the removal of a dead embryo or dead fetus, or an ectopic, anembryonic, or molar pregnancy, which results in injury to or death of the woman’s unborn child when the physician makes reasonable medical efforts under the circumstances to preserve both the life of the woman and the life of her unborn child according to reasonable medical judgment and appropriate interventions for the gestational age of the child.” 

“Democrats should be lining up to sign on to this bill,” Goeben said in a statement about the bill. “This is what liberals have been shouting about from the rooftops for decades. However, they continue to perpetuate the notion women are not going to get the care they need in a heart wrenching emergency situation.”

Physicians, Democratic lawmakers and others have spoken to concerns since the overturn of Roe v. Wade that restrictive state laws governing abortion would result in women not receiving adequate medical care, even when there is an emergency. ProPublica has reported on the preventable deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, both of whom were denied timely care due to confusion created by Georgia’s six-week abortion ban. It has also reported on two women in Texas, Josseli Barnica and Nevaeh Crain, who died under the state’s restrictive abortion ban after care was delayed for their miscarriages.

Roys said the bill is an example of Republicans trying to distance themselves from the impact of restrictive abortion policies. 

“Republicans know that their abortion bans hurt women, and they kill women, and Americans are horrified to see women being arrested and jailed instead of taken to the hospital for treatment when they have a miscarriage. They are horrified to see pregnant people turned away from emergency rooms so that they can bleed out and almost die in Walmart parking lots… and now Republicans are desperately searching for a way to distance themselves from the terrible effects of the laws that they passed. And [to] simply say if you need to end your pregnancy, we’re going to call it something different than abortion is nonsense.” 

Roys said the bill is “pernicious” because it would essentially tell providers to provide a C-section or induce labor rather than provide an abortion. Those procedures, she said, are “much more difficult, painful, and risky and invasive than doing an abortion.” 

“It affects a woman’s future ability to birth and be pregnant the way that she wants to be, and it is incredibly cruel,” Roys said.