Contact: Peggy Hamill, State Director
Matt Sande, Director of Legislative Affairs
(262) 796-1111, (414) 416-0489 or info@prolifewisconsin.org

Pro-Life Wisconsin to Attorney General Lautenschlager:
Forcing Contraceptive Coverage is Bad Public Policy

Statement from Peggy Hamill, State Director, Pro-Life Wisconsin:

Amidst the recent clamoring for legal action to force Wisconsin employers to cover birth control chemicals and devices, common sense seems to have fallen prey to political posturing.

On October 17, Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager issued an informal legal opinion that the Wisconsin Fair Employment Act (WFEA) would likely require employers who provide broad-based prescription drug coverage to provide contraceptive coverage as well. Lieutenant Governor Barbara Lawton held a news conference last week hailing the opinion, and it now appears that a Wausau family planning provider may take legal action against two area employers. It is obvious that what the liberals in Madison cannot accomplish legislatively, they will seek to accomplish through the courts.

While the federal EEOC’s past opinion that an employer’s failure to pay for birth control violates the Pregnancy Discrimination Act is certainly fueling the current efforts to settle the issue legally, one important question is not being asked: Is this really necessary?

Pregnancy is not a disease. Unborn children are not the moral or legal equivalent of tumors. Labor and employment attorney Katharine Parker stated after the federal ruling, "The EEOC is arguing that contraceptives are preventive care for the medical condition of pregnancy but the medical condition for pregnancy is quite different from heart disease. People choose to become pregnant; they don't choose to get heart disease."

Why should the government force insurance companies – and the policyholders who will pay for this expansion through increased premiums – to cover drugs and devices that are purely elective? If a woman does not wish to become pregnant, there are other actions she can take to avoid pregnancy. But the real question is who should be responsible for her choices? In the eyes of the EEOC and Attorney General Lautenschlager, we all should foot the bill for the choices she makes.

It’s ironic that the same individuals who argue so vehemently against government intrusion in our private lives are leading the charge for this mandate. Aren’t they all about “choice”? If individuals want to purchase health insurance that offers birth control coverage, those plans are available. But what about those who don’t want or need such coverage? Their right to choose is ignored in order to further a supposedly pro-choice agenda.

Whether Planned Parenthood wants to acknowledge the facts or not, many of these so-called contraceptives do not always prevent conception. Instead, they can act and often do act to cause early abortions by preventing implantation of the newly-conceived human being. Read the tiny print inside the packaging of Depo-Provera, Norplant, the patch, the pill, or “emergency contraception” and the action is clearly stated. Let’s also remember that many of these drugs and devices come with serious, sometimes deadly, side effects.

Yet the so-called pro-choice movement wants the millions of Americans who oppose abortion and know human life begins at the moment of fertilization to pay – through their insurance premiums – for the elective actions of others. What about our choice? What about our consciences? And what about the rights of those health insurers and health providers who have religious, moral, or ethical objections to offering these drugs and devices, which from their perspective are the antitheses of true health care?

It’s easy to mouth the mantra of choice when any issue surrounding human reproduction is broached. But before we blindly follow the crowd, let’s take a deep look at what we are really advocating:

�h Forcing insurance companies and their policyholders to fund birth control chemicals and devices isn’t really pro-choice. It’s nothing more than another attempt to force all of us to fund an anti-life agenda that endangers the lives of women and their children.

�h Compounding skyrocketing health insurance premiums by mandating medically unnecessary items is economically foolish. Forced to cover such expenses, companies may respond by downsizing or eliminating health care coverage altogether. This is not the shot in the arm that our state economy so desperately needs. It’s more like a shot in the heart!

Hopefully, no Wisconsin court will share the Attorney General’s opinion. That would certainly be in the best interest of the conscience and economy of our great state.

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