OB-GYN fears Wisconsin women will die if Brad Schimel is elected to state Supreme Court

“I lived my worst nightmare. I am forever changed as a person,” says Dr. Anna Igler, an OB-GYN who lives and practices medicine just outside of Green Bay.

At 24 weeks pregnant with a much-wanted second baby, Igler learned that the daughter she was carrying had a dire prognosis: Her brain had been permanently damaged by a virus and she could die at any moment.

Igler says she was initiated into “the world of maternal grief. Deep, deep heartbreaking grief that never leaves you. Man, it is heartbreaking to lose a child like I did.”

Igler and her husband had to make the tortured decision to travel to Colorado to have an abortion “out of love and mercy, and not wanting her to suffer, because if she would have been born living she would have suffered so much,” Igler said.

While Dr. Igler faced this tragedy in 2020, before Roe v. Wade had been overturned by the US Supreme Court, the couple was still forced to leave their home state of Wisconsin for the procedure.

Wisconsin bans abortions after 20 weeks, except to save the life of the mother or to preserve one of her major bodily functions from irreversible damage. Doctors face six years in jail for breaking the law.

Today, Igler is worried that if Wisconsinites elect anti-abortion candidate Brad Schimel to the state Supreme Court in the upcoming April 1 election, things will get even more difficult for people seeking abortions in the Badger State. 

That’s because whoever wins that election—Schimel, or his opponent Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, who has a history of upholding reproductive rights—will determine the ideological majority on the state’s highest court. And not long after the election, the court will rule on a case that could reinstate a total abortion ban from 1849, with an exception only to save the life of the mother.  

That’s why the OB-GYN and mom of three has been devoting her energy to appearing in public forums and on panels ahead of the April 1 election.

It’s also why an exhausted Igler, who had just been on call at her hospital for 24 hours, was determined to drive to Milwaukee on March 18 to join Crawford in support and tell the story of why she herself needed a heartbreaking medical abortion.

The rally Igler attended at the University of Wisconsin was packed and attentive as she spoke alongside abortion advocate Amanda Zurawski, who almost died from sepsis when she was denied an abortion in Texas after her water broke at 18 weeks.

BRAD SCHIMEL CALLS THE 1849 ABORTION BAN ‘A VALID LAW’

Igler wants Wisconsinites to know that Schimel, a Republican, calls the state’s 1849 ban a “valid law.”

He also contends that there is no right to an abortion in Wisconsin’s state constitution, an issue that is currently in front of the state’s Supreme Court. He has declared that if the Supreme Court finds that the Wisconsin constitution does protect the right to an abortion, then the ruling will be a “sham.”

But banning abortion isn’t the only way that Schimel has worked against the health care of Wisconsinites. While serving as Wisconsin Attorney General from 2015 to 2019, he led a coalition of 20 Republican states which sought to overturn the Affordable Care Act.

In contrast, Crawford, who hopes to replace retiring liberal Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, has represented Wisconsin’s Planned Parenthood as a private attorney in the past.

She has committed to “protect the basic rights and freedoms of Wisconsinites under our constitution,” which she warns were threatened “by an all-out effort to politicize the court to drive a right-wing agenda.”

Crawford has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin and the reproductive rights group Reproductive Freedom For All.

Whichever judge is elected, they will serve a 10-year term on the court, and their rulings will impact Wisconsinites for decades to come.

DANGEROUS LIAISONS

In recent days, Donald Trump’s top campaign donor and DOGE leader Elon Musk has begun offering Wisconsin voters $100 each to sign a petition in opposition to “activist judges,” which appears to be an attack on Susan Crawford. Since the race started, Musk has poured more than $13 million into trying to help elect Brad Schimel, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. 

Just days before Musk’s groups started spending on the Supreme Court race, electric car manufacturer Tesla sued the state of Wisconsin over a decision to not allow the company to open dealerships. Musk is the CEO of Tesla. The case could ultimately come before the state Supreme Court. 

Schimel earlier this week campaigned with Donald Trump Jr. at an event where the president’s son said electing Schimel was essential for protecting Trump’s agenda.

Millions have also poured in from progressive and anti-MAGA donors for what has become the most expensive state Supreme Court race in history.

‘I CANNOT SIT IDLY BY’

Despite juggling 80-hour work weeks and from caring for her three young children, Dr. Igler is committed to activism in support of reproductive freedom in Wisconsin.

“I can not sit idly by and watch abortion rights taken away,” she said. “Abortion bans hurt women. They kill women. There are politicians making laws about how I practice medicine. But I am the expert.”

“I went to medical school for four years and did a residency for four years. I’ve been a practicing, Board certified OB-GYN for over 10 years. They shouldn’t be telling me how to practice obstetrics and gynecology. I guarantee most of them don’t know what a fallopian tube is.”

She claps back at Wisconsin’s Republican state legislators who support Schimel and the 1849 law: “If you’re so interested in other people’s personal lives and their sexual practices and fertility, then why don’t you start regulating Viagra?”

The AP contributed to this story.