Vote Today on Senate Bill 306 Puts Extreme Social Agenda Ahead of Women's Health
For immediate release Contact: Lisa Subeck February 21, 2012 (608) 358-7090 Vote Today on Senate Bill 306 Puts Extreme Social Agenda Ahead of Women's Health State Senate poised to pass bill criminalizing doctors and interfering with access to women's health care
Madison, WI – The “War on Women” continues with a vote scheduled today on Senate Bill 306, which seeks to impose new and unnecessary barriers for women seeking abortion care and is yet another example of politicians interfering with decisions that should be made privately between a woman and her doctor. SB 306 not only sets new standards of care contradictory to those prescribed by leading medical authorities such as the American Medical Association and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, but the bill also threatens physicians providing this care with felony criminal penalties. “This attack on women's health care is nothing more than an unnecessary and overreaching attempt by anti-choice legislators to chip away at access to abortion,” said NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin Executive Director Lisa Subeck. “Worse, the legislation threatens and intimidates doctors with criminal penalties for providing what has been deemed safe, legal, and constitutionally protected medical care.” Dangerous and unnecessary provisions of SB 306 include: - New requirements on top of an already mandated politician-prescribed counseling script. This legislation would cruelly force a woman – who may already have been a victim of sexual assault or may be in medical peril – to speak to the counselor without her husband, mother, friend, or any other support person present in an effort to determine she is not being physically coerced into the procedure. Additionally, this new provision is redundant, as voluntary informed consent laws already require that a woman be given the option of speaking to the counselor alone and must sign a state mandated form verifying that her consent to the procedure is voluntary and of her own free will.
- Prohibition on the use of telemedicine for abortion care. This bill would prohibit the use of telemedicine in medical abortion. Telemedicine is not currently used for abortion care in Wisconsin, and has been deemed safe by medical authorities where it is in use. This portion of the bill would also dictate that a woman who has had an abortion must receive follow-up care from the physician who provided the abortion, ignoring the desire of many women to receive this follow-up care from their own primary physician.
- Intimidation of physicians providing abortion care. Doctors who provide abortion services would be subject to criminal penalties not based on standards of care set by medical experts but on standards set arbitrarily by politicians who oppose abortion altogether. This is a blatant attempt by anti-choice legislators to intimidate abortion providers and further restrict access to abortion.
“Women trust medical experts – not politicians – to set standards of care when it comes to our health. The motives behind SB 306 are clear,” continued Subeck. “This is not a bill about patient safety and only serves to diminish access to women's health care. It is nothing more than a blatant attempt by its authors to chip away at women's access to their constitutionally protected right to choose safe and legal abortion when facing an unintended or untenable pregnancy.” ###
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