[media-credit name=’DEREK MONTGOMERY/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]
Many concerned women gathered at the Monona Terrace Tuesday to discuss women’s health issues and attend workshops led by Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager, Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton and state senators.

“It is a premise of our own Constitution that [women] should be able to take part — this is access of women to simple humanitarian medical care,” Lawton said.

Women were encouraged to support several bills aimed at ensuring the health and safety of women. The Compassionate Care for Rape Victims Act was one such bill discussed at the conference.

“[Women’s health care] is under continued attack and, if we don’t remain vigilant, [it] will disappear,” Lautenschlager said.

According to Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin’s Public Affairs Department, the bill guarantees victims of rape or incest access to reliable, effective methods of pregnancy prevention.

Under the bill, hospitals would be required to provide information about obtaining emergency contraception, which is a high dose of birth-control medication preventing pregnancy up to 120 hours after unprotected sex.

State Sen. Fred Risser, D-Madison, said the success of the Compassionate Care for Rape Victims Act depends on the amount of bipartisan support the bill can generate.

“Politics are very important — every vote really does count,” Risser said. “It used to be that women could count on the Supreme Court to preserve their rights, but they aren’t helping out as much now.”

Approximately 300,000 women in Wisconsin require access to family-planning funds, but only one-half of these women are receiving state benefits, according to Planned Parenthood. The organization hopes Gov. Jim Doyle’s budget proposal to allocate more funds for family planning will be passed in the Legislature.

Also mentioned at the conference was a proposed birth-control ban, which would eliminate 127 publicly funded family-planning clinics providing health services to 100,000 low-income women in Wisconsin.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute estimates that Wisconsin’s family-planning establishments avoid 35,200 unintended pregnancies and 17,600 abortions each year.

Funding for women’s health is also obtained through Medicaid, but speakers at the conference expressed their concern over budget cuts. Lautenschlager said the federal government is currently proposing $20 billion in cuts to Medicaid.

Controversy surrounds the ability of institutes to provide access to birth control, and Planned Parenthood has been targeted as an outlet of opponents’ frustration.