Passing an emergency contraception bill without an exclusion would mean rape victims won't have to worry that they will become pregnant by their attacker, Barb Wise, a physical therapist from Chippewa Falls, said in an interview before the Assembly debate.

"Why should someone have to shop around for basic care?" said Wise, who said she received a form of emergency contraception at UW Hospital in 1972 after she was raped. "(Treatment) is time sensitive, and people are traumatized."

But Dr. John Rinke, an emergency room doctor with Community Memorial Hospital in Menomonee Falls, worries that without the amendment the bill could cause him to dispense the pill despite his personal objections.

"I don't want to have to choose between my conscience and my career," Rinke said before the debate.

Rep. Terry Musser, R-Black River Falls, a sponsor of the bill, said that wouldn't happen. The bill wouldn't require a specific person to dispense the emergency contraception, he said.

Musser said Assembly Republicans spent much of the afternoon debating in private the opt-out amendment.

"It would gut the bill," Musser said of the potential amendment.

Nine states require hospitals to provide emergency contraception to rape victims on request, according to the Guttmacher Institute of New York, which supports reproductive health rights.

Wisconsin's emergency contraception bill has the support of a wide range of groups, from the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault to the Wisconsin Sheriffs and Deputy Sheriffs Association to the Wisconsin Nurses Association.

Pro-Life Wisconsin opposes the bill. But other groups opposing abortion rights, including the Wisconsin Catholic Conference and Wisconsin Right-to-Life, remained neutral.

Earlier this year, the Senate approved the measure by a bipartisan 27-6 vote.

An Assembly committee also backed it, but only after adding a provision allowing hospitals and individual health providers to opt out of offering the pill on moral or religious grounds. Critics said that would undermine the bill.

So Musser and Reps. Jeff Wood, R-Chippewa Falls, and Mark Pocan, D-Madison, introduced a proposal to have the Assembly vote on the original bill — with no exclusions based on conscience.

Earlier Tuesday, supporters of the measure, including Wise, greeted members of the Assembly with signs reading, among other things, "I support compassionate care."

Opponents spent the day lobbying lawmakers to vote against the bill.

Wise said she was grateful that UW Hospital provided her emergency contraception 30 years ago.

"It meant I didn't have to carry a rapist's child when I was, two days later, taking my exams for the university," Wise said. "I had other things to think about rather than whether in six weeks I'd be pregnant."

Rinke said the bill would coerce medical professionals to offer rape victims the contraception that he believes causes abortion. The pill is the equivalent of abortion because it blocks the implantation of an embryo, he said.