Concerned over a proposed bill banning emergency contraception, and possibly all forms of oral contraception from University of Wisconsin Health Services, students and members of the grassroots organization Our Bodies, Our Rights! rallied at Library Mall Friday in opposition to the bill's potential passage.
The proposed bill, AB-343, has already made its way through the Wisconsin State Legislature and, if passed through the senate and approved by Gov. Jim Doyle, would prohibit UHS from prescribing, dispensing and advertising emergency contraception.
To halt efforts to enact the bill, OBOR has entrenched itself on the issue, demanding it be repealed.
Members of OBOR and other opponents to the bill — whose author, Rep. Daniel LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, says is specifically meant to prohibit emergency contraception — believe its wording could also be interpreted to ban the distribution of birth control.
At the rally, protesters took center stage across from Memorial Library, voicing their objections to the bill and why it should be rejected.
Atop the staging at Library Mall, OBOR representative April Scheiner tearfully spoke out against the emergency contraception bill and the potential ramifications the bill would have against rape victims.
"It's a privacy issue, they should not be telling us what to do with our lives," she said in an interview. "We will not go back. We will not go back to the days when birth control was illegal."
Behind chants demanding "We won't loose the right to choose!" UW senior Meg Singer said she once sought emergency contraception from UHS and wouldn't want to see others stripped of the option.
"I definitely think everyone should have access to it," she said, while donning a picket sign with the Fredrick Douglass quote: "A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
While emergency contraception is generally regarded as a women's issue, a number of male attendees, including UW freshman Chapin Smith, showed up to voice their concerns with the bill.
"Any politician who decides to come up with a law like this, especially when he says it's to discourage promiscuity among women … [is] trying to impose his personal ideas of morals and ethics into the whole society," Smith said. "I think it's sick."
While proponents of the bill claim UHS makes emergency contraception overly accessible by dispensing them to anyone requesting them via phone consultation, Executive Director Kathy Poi refutes their claims as misleading.
"In either case [emergency contraception is] handled just like any other medication … and that's not a change. That's been in our practice for many years … as many years as emergency contraception has been available on the market," Poi said, adding a woman must talk to her health care provider to receive a prescription.
Poi added some women choose to use other methods of contraception, which can include condoms or diaphragms, but can receive emergency prescriptions "in case they need it."
"[Emergency contraception] works very effectively and carries little to no risks with it," she said, adding the emergency contraception proposal would significantly affect UHS.
