[media-credit name=’JAKE NAUGHTON/Herald photo’ align=’alignright’ width=’336′][/media-credit]

Lengthy and heated debate surrounding a
bill that would require hospitals to provide emergency contraception
to victims of rape finally came to a close Wednesday with the
legislation?s 61-35 passage in the Republican-controlled state
Assembly.

If enacted, the bill dubbed by some as
the ?Compassionate Care for Rape Victims Act? and others the
?Chemical Abortion Hospital Mandate,? requires all Wisconsin
hospitals give rape victims information about emergency
contraception, or the morning-after pill, and dispense it upon
request.

The bill next goes back to the
Democratic-controlled state Senate to approve a technical change,
where it is expected to pass easily, and then to Gov. Jim Doyle?s
desk to be signed into law.

The issue surrounding emergency
contraception drew heavy debate from both sides.

Neither Amanda Harrington nor John
Rinke planned to become activists, but both were personally affected
by the issue and spurred into speaking out.

Harrington, a recent graduate of the
University of Wisconsin, was interning at Planned Parenthood when she
heard about the bill. She was offered emergency contraception after
surviving a sexual assault while she studied abroad in Italy, and
that experience made her feel personally connected to the issue in
Wisconsin.

?I was outraged that only a third of
hospitals in Wisconsin were providing this treatment for women,?
Harrington said.

She explained her role with Planned
Parenthood has mostly involved raising awareness, and she hasn?t
found people who truly oppose the idea.

?I don?t meet opposition when I
explain it to fathers and mothers and their daughters, too,?
Harrington said. ?When I explained to my father, and his friends,
they were outraged, because they heard what he went through.?

Rinke, an emergency room doctor at
Community Memorial Hospital in Menomonee Falls, Wis., heard about the
bill through a Catholic physicians? group, and worries about the
personal ramifications of requiring doctors like him to dispense a
drug to which they are morally opposed.

?I know physicians, I know emergency
physicians, I know hospital administrators,? Rinke said. ?Emergency
medicine has been my breath and my blood for more than 25 years; this
bill will affect emergency physicians.?

He said though doctors who fail to
produce information or dispense emergency contraception wouldn?t be
fined directly, the fines assessed to hospitals would put their jobs
in jeopardy.

?It puts the emergency physician who
is pro-life in the untenable position of having to choose between his
conscience and his career,? Rinke said.

The difference between the two is
fundamentally who each sees as the patient.

?When people see this issue, they see
the humanity, they see that the woman in front of you is the patient
at the particular moment,? Harrington said.

But Rinke said the bill ?places the
physician in the position of swinging the axe of an executor.?

?There are two patients here, not
just one,? he added.

As for when the bill becomes law, Rinke
worries about the effect it will have on rural emergency rooms and
other hospitals that had previously not been sexual assault care
centers.

?What the state of Wisconsin is
saying to me with this bill is: If you love a patient so much that
you can?t stand hurting them, that you can?t stand killing them ?
then you don?t belong in Wisconsin, find someplace else to practice
your profession,? Rinke said.

Harrington, however, was pleased to see
the bill pass the Assembly. ?I think it?s a huge victory, but I
also think this is just one step to justice for rape victims,? she
said.