MADISON, Wis. >> The Wisconsin Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Monday on whether a law that legislators adopted more than a decade before the Civil War bans abortion and can still be enforced.

Abortion-rights advocates stand an excellent chance of prevailing, given that liberal justices control the court and one of them remarked on the campaign trail that she supports abortion rights. Monday’s arguments are little more than a formality ahead of a ruling, which is expected to take weeks.

Wisconsin lawmakers passed the state’s first prohibition on abortion in 1849. That law stated that anyone who killed a fetus unless the act was to save the mother’s life was guilty of manslaughter.

— The Associated Press