News & Commentary

Wisconsin Attorney General J.B Van Hollen asked the Supreme Court today to grant certiorari in Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, Inc, et al., v. Van Hollen, a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Wisconsin, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, challenging that state’s admitting privileges law for abortion providers. The admitting privileges law singles out abortion providers for medically unnecessary restrictions and would force two of the four clinics in the state to stop offering abortion care. The Seventh Circuit had upheld a lower court’s decision blocking the Wisconsin law. Judge Posner, writing for the court, described the medical grounds supporting the law as “feeble.” Doctors and leading medical groups, such as the American Medical Association, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the Wisconsin Public Health Association, have opposed such requirements because they are unnecessary for the provision of safe, high-quality health care, and because they prevent women from getting necessary services. Wisconsin law does not require doctors providing surgery at other health centers to have admitting privileges even for more complicated procedures. The Wisconsin law is based on a model bill, not from any medical organization, but from Americans United for Life (AUL).  AUL has touted these measures as a way to shut down women’s health centers. It is similar to laws passed in Mississippi, North Dakota, and Alabama that have all been blocked by the courts, as well as a Texas law that recently went into effect and has left large swaths of the state without any abortion providers.

In a fast-moving piece of legislation, Senators are using Governor Walker’s special session on job creation to repeal the progress made after the passage of the 2009 Healthy Youth Act. The Healthy Youth Act raised the state standards for public school human growth and development instruction. This bill requires schools to revert back to the proven failure of abstinence-until-marriage types of instruction. This bill even redefines what “medically accurate” and “age appropriate” means.

The Wisconsin Senate Committee on Public Health, Human Resources and Revenue held a hearing on Senate Bill 92, a bill that would ban private insurance companies that provide abortion coverage from participating in future heath care exchanges promised by the Affordable Care Act (recent federal health care reform). The ACLU of Wisconsin was there to testify against the bill because we feel it interferes in women's private medical decisions by taking away insurance coverage for consumers who need comprehensive reproductive care.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin would like to send three cheers to the Merrill school board and the Mauston’s school district’s Human Growth and Development Advisory Committee for affirming that fact-based, comprehensive sexuality education should be taught in their local classrooms. The Merrill school board and Mauston’s board committee made decisions that will help young people in their district get the information and life skills they need to make healthy choices throughout their lives.

The district attorney in Juneau County has made an ill-advised attack on Wisconsin’s newly passed comprehensive sexuality education law. The Healthy Youth Act raises the state standards for human growth and development curricula. But the letter from District Attorney Southworth erroneously compares teaching the facts about reproduction and contraception to the sexual assault of children. “The district attorney in Juneau County has taken it upon himself to threaten possible prosecution of public school teachers in the county, if they follow a new state law that requires medically accurate and age appropriate sex education. He says that accurate information encourages teens to have sex, but the new law actually requires teachers to inform their students that sex with a minor is illegal.”

The most basic right to privacy and liberty is the right to control the health and well being of one’s own body. For that reason, reproductive freedom is one of the most important rights the ACLU works to protect for women and men across the country and here in Wisconsin. Non-discrimination in insurance coverage, access to birth control and abortion, complete and medically accurate information and education about reproduction, and ending the practice of shackling women who carry their pregnancy to term in prison are just a few examples of the ACLU’s reproductive freedom work.

Most recently, the ACLU of Wisconsin supported state budget policy provisions that included contraceptive equity (requiring all insurance plans to provide contraception in their prescription drug coverage), prescription protection (requiring all pharmacies to have someone on staff to dispense FDA-approved contraception in a timely manner for any customer with a valid prescription), and including men among those eligible for federal family planning. The ACLU of Wisconsin supported these provisions which advance equal access to important reproductive health care for men and women in Wisconsin.