Legislative Inaction Kills Compassionate Care for Rape Victims Act

While the flurry of activity that occurred two weeks ago passed a lot of meaningless and bad bills, a lot of good bills didn’t pass.

One of those bills, AB305, didn’t even get a public hearing in either the Senate or Assembly health committees.

AB305, authored by myself and Sen. Judy Robson, would require all hospitals in Wisconsin to provide information about and access to emergency contraception to rape survivors. If taken within 12 hours of unprocted sex, they are 89% effective in preventing a pregnancy. NOTE: This is not an abortion pill. Emergency contraception would have no impact on a current pregnancy. It is merely a higher concentration of birth control pills, which are already legal in Wisconsin.

In a 2001 study, less than half of the hospitals in Wisconsin even tell a rape survivor about emergency contraception, much less dispense it.

Surely, someone who has just experienced the trauma of a rape should not have to go through the additional trauma of shopping around to find comprehensive health care to avoid an unintended pregnancy.

The bill had a “people’s” public hearing in Milwaukee yesterday sponsored by Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin where about 40-50 people attended to show their support for the bill. Testimony was intense. Survivors of rape expressed their strong support for the bill as they told their stories.

Surely, if we have time to pass on tax credits to special interests, allow 8-year-olds to hunt and ban civil unions and same sex marriage that is already banned, we would have time to pass a common sense measure to help survivors of rape.

The public gets it. In an August 2004 poll of 500 voters in Wisconsin, 81 percent favored requiring emergency rooms to make emergency contraceptives available to rape victims.

Why is it always so hard to get the legislature to understand what the public really wants?