Free & Just, an organization dedicated to stopping abortion restrictions, held a press conference on Thursday to honor the 53rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade’s passage and to highlight discussions around abortion access in Wisconsin.
Patient-storytellers were joined by Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin public affairs organizer Sydney O’Hare, Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, and First Baptist Church of Madison to speak about the impacts of Wisconsin abortion restrictions in their lives and communities.
O’Hare said she is a former Planned Parenthood patient herself and knows firsthand that lives depend on the preservation of bodily autonomy. She said in less than two years of working at Planned Parenthood Wisconsin, clinics paused abortion access and fought a federal defunding campaign.
“Many of my colleagues don’t remember a more difficult time for Planned Parenthood Wisconsin,” O’Hare said. “None of this is inevitable. Restrictive federal policies, partisan obstruction are … the result of deliberate choices that create confusion, constantly change the rules and make it harder for real people to get the care that they need.”
Rev. Tim Schaefer of First Baptist Church said the climate surrounding abortion since the Dobbs decision — which overturned the constitutional right to abortion access — is not a fluke.
Schaefer said this moment can be attributed to Project 2025, which he said has been an agenda set forth to violate Americans’ religious freedoms by imposing one narrow view onto the entirety of the country.
“This is Christian nationalism, not Christianity,” Schaefer said. “It’s distortion, not faith, but coercion … It uses God as a cover for domination, and it is a threat not only to reproductive freedom, but to our broader civil liberties, to democracy and to the soul of this nation.”
RCC Sexual Violence Resource Center executive director Dana Pellebon said legislation like the Clean Water for All Life bill is cause for concern to her as someone who experienced a miscarriage and had an abortion.
The bill would require doctors prescribing mifepristone, or abortion pills, to give patients catch kits for their pregnancy tissue over concerns that the procedure is contaminating waterways, according to 15 WTMV.
“Republican politicians will stop at nothing to strip women of our most basic and fundamental right to our own health and our own lives,” Roys said. “It is not just Roe that is under attack by right wing ideologues, it is a whole line of cases that guarantees each and every one of us the right to make our own decisions.”
Reproductive rights advocate Patricia McFarland said she travelled alone to Mexico to receive an abortion prior to Roe v. Wade’s passage in 1970 while attending UW.
McFarland said as a student, she worked at a women’s group that operated on campus to assist individuals in need of an abortion. She said as a Catholic, she was happy to help, but never assumed she would be in need of the service.
“[The doctors] put me back on the plane after 12 shots to stop the bleeding, and told me if I wanted kids, I better go to the university clinic right away,” McFarland said. “My heart goes out to women who are being denied care in states with abortion bans, women who share my experience of leaving their home to access care.”
