Issues come and go inside the tempestuous arena that is politics.

Some flash quickly and then fade from public and legislative attention. Think of the Terri Schiavo case that was headline news for days in 2005. The issue was whether to remove the feeding tube that was keeping her alive. By 2006 nobody was talking about Terri Schiavo.

Then there are those issues that come and never seem to go away. Pretty clearly our war in Iraq and Afghanistan, now a dozen years old,  is one of those issues. We seem to be fighting over issues of race that we’ve been fighting about for over 100 years.

One of the issues I thought we were pretty well past is the issue of abortion.

But ever since Roe v. Wade states have found a huge number of ways to challenge the law of the land or to create legislation that would alter the intent of the law, which legalized abortion. The U.S. Supreme court has overturned some of those attempts and has ratified others.

It’s been over four decades since the landmark decision and the forces arrayed against the law have never rested.

Maybe I have not been paying attention, but I had the feeling that the issue was pretty much on a back burner in recent years, especially in Wisconsin. Now, I feel stupid for not keeping myself aware.

The Wisconsin legislature is about to pass, and Gov. Scott Walker has vowed to sign, a measure banning all abortions after 20 weeks, even in cases of rape and incest, except when the woman is experiencing a medical emergency.

This whole thing just resonates with me, especially since I went through this once, before Roe v. Wade was even decided. It was a difficult decision and asking my dad for the $200 to pay for an abortion was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

But it was at that point I became thoroughly convinced that there was a lot more to the health of a woman than some kind of quantifiable medical verdict.

Other states have passed similar laws. Most of them, however, have provisions that protect the mother. The bill Walker will sign only says that the doctor isn’t "required" to perform a type of abortion that increases the risk to women.

This bill is focused on the fetus and the two sides both make wildly divergent claims. The pro-life crowd maintains that at 20 weeks a fetus can feel pain. The pro-choice people maintain that it isn’t until 27 weeks that a fetus can feel pain.

The most distressing aspect of this whole thing is that it’s still going on. Both sides have employed many lobbyists and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on that lobbying. 

We are still debating details and trying to legislate beliefs about an issue that has already been decided.

The right of a woman to decide what happens to their bodies is inviolate in my mind. Certainly, the decision to have an abortion is a complicated one and fraught with difficulty.  But that decision belongs to the woman.

If it’s a choice, which it is, the decision has to go to the woman. And there are so many things that go into this beyond the simple medical evaluations that there really should be no doubt about this.

I only wish that all the money, time and effort spent by the opposing zealots could be spent on solving some of the important issues facing all of us, things like income inequality, a repeal of the law about corporate campaign contributions or fighting for more resources for public education.

I wish.