The liberal majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court struck down the state’s 176-year-old abortion ban on Wednesday, backing a lower court’s decision to overturn the 19th-century law. The 4-3 ruling ends three years of legal fighting over the issue,

Wisconsin's top state court ruled on Wednesday that an 1849 state law banning abortion in virtually all cases cannot be enforced, rejecting claims it had been revived after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling three years ago returned the authority to regulate abortion to individual states.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the state’s 176-year-old abortion ban in a 4-3 ruling, saying that it was superseded by a more recent state law criminalizing abortions only in cases when a fetus is viable outside the womb.