UW Birth Control Ban Meets Widespread Opposition
Capitol hearing room overflows with citizens opposing unconstitutional ban
Madison, WI – Yesterday, state lawmakers heard volumes of testimony opposing the UW Birth Control Ban (authored by Representative Daniel LeMahieu, R-Oostburg) prohibiting University of Wisconsin Health Services from prescribing, dispensing, or advertising birth control pills. Patients, health care providers, and community members joined Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager in opposing the ban. The Attorney General’s analysis of the bill found it to be unconstitutional in several ways.
Contraception is basic health care: over 95 percent of American women use birth control at some point, without which the average woman would have 12-15 pregnancies. Many women use hormonal birth control to treat serious, life-threatening conditions. Anti-birth control politicians and groups are nevertheless attempting to interfere in the personal lives of Wisconsin’s citizens, violating women’s constitutional right to access birth control and putting women’s health at risk.
“Wisconsinites support a culture of freedom and personal responsibility – that’s the pro-choice, pro-health position. We deserve the tools to make informed choices about our health care,” said Kelda Helen Roys, Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin. “The same legislators who want to make it more dangerous and difficult to terminate a pregnancy also want to eliminate our ability to prevent unintended pregnancy in the first place. Birth control should be the common ground in the debate over a woman’s right to choose – common sense says that we should expand access to contraception, not ban it.”
The UW Birth Control Ban purports to target emergency contraception, but in fact could ban all birth control pills. Emergency contraception (EC) is a high dose of normal hormonal birth control that is highly effective at preventing pregnancy up to 120 hours after unprotected sex or sexual assault. Increased access to EC has the potential to significantly reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and the need for abortion and is particularly important for rape victims. Access to EC does not make young women more likely to have unprotected sex or to disregard their regular contraceptive method (e.g., Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology 2004).
More information is available on NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin’s website, www.prochoicewisconsin.org. NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin is the state’s leading organization dedicated exclusively to political advocacy for women’s reproductive health, including preventing unintended pregnancies, bearing healthy children, and choosing legal abortion.
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