Anti-abortion activists rallying at the state Capitol Tuesday said time is running out to pass three bills that would ban research on fetal tissue and block federal funding for Planned Parenthood clinics that provide abortions and birth control drugs. Gilman Halsted reports.
About 40 protesters braved frigid temperatures on the Capitol steps to listen to the bill’s sponsors explain the urgency of getting the legislation passed before the session ends. Republican state Rep. Joel Kleefisch said the bills are a top priority for his party’s caucus.
“If we don’t say life is important from its very beginning, nothing else we do matters because every one of the bills and every one of the laws that’s signed in this building affects what? The lives of the people of the state of Wisconsin,” said Kleefisch.
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Planned Parenthood’s public policy director Nicole Safar said the bills are part of an effort to shut down the organization that she said provides both reproductive health services and critical preventive screening tests for breast and cervical cancer.
Backers of the legislation argue other health care providers that don’t provide abortion services will step up to provide those services if they are able to strip Planned Parenthood’s funding.
Safar said that isn’t the case:
“Every single health care organization or public health entity that has spoken out on these bills have said there is no one else who’s going to fill the gap for men and women who need access to affordable high quality reproductive health care.”
Assembly Bill 310 would cut off federal Title X funds to any organization that provides abortion services, effectively blocking any of those dollars from going to Planned parenthood.
Assembly Bill 311 would require Planned Parenthood to discount the price of birth control medications. Backers say Planned Parenthood is getting the drugs at a discount through Medicaid and charging a higher price to sell them to their patients. But Planned Parenthood’s Safar said the organization is not making big profits on the medications and is re-investing the money from the sales directly back into providing reproductive health care.
The bill banning fetal tissue research has passed the Assembly and pro-life groups have scheduled a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald this week to urge him to bring it to the floor for a vote. Neither of the other two bills that affect funding for Planned Parenthood have been scheduled for a vote yet.
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