A ban to punish Wisconsin women

WISCONSIN REPUBLICANS are backing a bill that would seriously jeopardize the lives of pregnant women. On June 4, the state's Senate Committee on Health and Human Services approved, on a 3-2 vote, the so-called "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act"--which seeks to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy and includes no exceptions for cases of rape or incest.

During six hours of testimony, physicians, mothers and many pro-choice advocates detailed the experiences of women who required abortions at or after 20 weeks and exposed the "junk science" upon which the bill is based. While anti-choice advocates turned out an almost equal number of speakers in support of the bill, they were at a loss to justify their position in the face of testimony against it.

The Wisconsin Medical Society (WMS) submitted a written statement opposing the bill, arguing that it represented "a dangerous slippery slope that interferes with the patient-physician relationship, and places an unneeded and unprecedented burden on Wisconsin physicians and women."

According to the WMS, only about 1 percent of abortions are performed at 21 weeks after last menstrual period (LMP) or later in a pregnancy, and most of these are in cases involving lethal fetal anomalies or the health of the mother.

Advocates of the bill claim that at 20 weeks, a fetus is capable of feeling pain. The WMS flatly denies these claims, arguing that "systematic reviews of the literature found that the majority of rigorous scientific data on fetal pain shows that pain is not felt by fetuses until 29-30 LMP weeks." The bill also sets the 20-week threshold with the term "post-fertilization"--a medically meaningless term, according to multiple speakers from the medical community who attended the hearing.

There are no exceptions in this bill for rape or incest. The bill does include exceptions in cases where the health or life of the mother is in danger. But physicians would be threatened with penalties of $10,000 in fines and three-and-a-half years in prison should they provide an abortion after 20 weeks outside of an emergency situation.

A physician who testified at the hearing argued that abortion as a medical procedure can be used specifically to avoid emergency situations. A pregnant woman, he said, should not have to be "at death's door" before she is allowed to exercise her right to choose.

While the question of fetal pain dominated much of the discussion, many speakers focused on the lived experiences of women who had had abortions after 20 weeks.

Dr. Tosha Wetterneck told the story of a 32-year-old woman who came in for her 20-week ultrasound and discovered that a leakage of amniotic fluid in her womb had restricted the development of the baby's arms, legs, chest wall and head. While at 20 weeks, the fetus was unable to feel any of this, at 29 to 30 weeks, it would have suffered immensely had the mother not had the option to terminate her pregnancy.

A mother named Regina shared her experience of being told that at 21 weeks that her fetus had developed a rare tumor called infantile fibrosarcoma, which medical specialists had been unable to identify for more than a week after it was noticed. Through tears, Regina explained that the choice she had to make was between "knowingly subjecting our child to the torture and pain of surgery and chemotherapy that would be futile, or we could prevent him from ever suffering."

TESTIMONY AT the hearing focused primarily on the medical reasons why women choose to abort after 20 weeks. But there are many other reasons a woman might choice this procedure.

Dayna Long is president of Wisconsin National Organization for Women and takes calls at a local organization that raises funds to help women obtain safe abortions. In an interview, she shared the reasons that women seek late-term abortions:

For the last two years, I've done light administrative work for a Wisconsin abortion fund. Recently, I started taking phone calls from women who need abortions but can't afford them, who are turning to us for help. I thought about these women and their stories a lot as I sat through over five hours of testimony, both for and against the 20-week abortion ban yesterday in the Wisconsin State capitol.

It became increasingly clear to me that many people can't conceive of the types of circumstances that some women are facing--circumstances that lead them to terminate their pregnancies at or close to 20 weeks. Though we spent a lot of time at the hearing hashing out the details of severe fetal anomalies and emergencies in which the life of a pregnant person is threatened by continuing the pregnancy, there are situations that don't fit either of these categories, and we still shouldn't be legislating women's decisions.

For example, some women begin a wanted pregnancy with their partner, only to have the circumstances of their relationship change dramatically. Sometimes, women's partners are incarcerated, diminishing their ability to afford to care for another baby. Sometimes women's partners are abusive, with abuse escalating throughout the pregnancy. In order to make a clean break, the woman might choose not to have her abusive partner's baby.

One woman I spoke to was in love with her fiancé and excited to be pregnant with his baby--until she discovered, around 16 weeks of pregnancy, that her fiancé was a pedophile whose presence in her life threatened the safety of her other children and would also pose a threat to any baby of his that she delivered.

Sometimes the relationship doesn't change but a woman's financial reality does. Getting laid off or fired mid-pregnancy can ruin a woman's ability to care for herself and her existing children. Another child might topple what little stability she has left. It's also not uncommon to hear from women who have recently been in terrible car accidents, which lead to costly medical and automotive repair bills. There are any number of personal tragedies or emergencies that take women from ready for another baby to starting from scratch with no money or no job or no home.

LONG EMPHASIZED how the 20-week ban, added to the restrictions that already exist, will make obtaining an abortion more difficult, particularly for working-class women:

There are three clinics left in Wisconsin, only two of which perform abortions on a weekly basis. If you live in the Northern part of the state, it can take over five hours to get to one of these two clinics, and you need to visit not once, but twice, with at least 24 hours in between the two appointments, due to an arduous Wisconsin law that is specifically designed to inconvenience women to the point that they can't access safe and legal abortion care.

A first appointment will cost between $75 to $125. For some women, the cost of the first appointment alone is a barrier, and many abortion funds can't help. Some women decide, after the first appointment, not to go through with the abortion. We have to save our precious and often inadequate dollars for women who want and need abortion care.

Women will spend weeks trying to fundraise this money, selling their belongings, getting loans from friends and family or putting off other bills, just to get the first appointment. Meanwhile, they advance in their pregnancy. Some women make it to the first appointment, only to find the cost of the actual abortion impossible. Funds can only help with so much. Sometimes, women miss earlier appointments because they're working overtime to come up with the rest of the money that they need. They don't realize that by waiting, the price will only continue to climb. It's a cruel financial race against time that causes women to advance in their pregnancy before getting an abortion.

Women get abortions for a variety of reasons, some of which will never occur to any of us. The same is true for women who get abortions at or near 20 weeks. I can't bring myself to distinguish between women's reasoning and I urge other reproductive health care advocates to resist that temptation as well. When we talk about the "life and health" of the mother, we often exclude a woman's financial health, her physical safety and her mental health, but those, too, are part of the picture. At the end of the day, none of it is anyone's business except for the patient and her physician.

The Wisconsin Senate is scheduled to take up the bill this week. It will also go to the state Assembly, although the timing hasn't been finalized. Gov. Scott Walker has said he will sign the bill if it comes to his desk.

Women's health organizations and reproductive rights groups are hesitant to call for direct action, although Planned Parenthood was largely responsible for the powerful turnout at the hearing. Unfortunately, they're waiting to see if lobbyists can sway a number of Republicans at least to include exceptions in the ban.

Putting off mobilizing a direct action campaign in favor of lobbying was exactly the strategy used by Wisconsin unions when confronted by "right-to-work" legislation. That strategy failed. and Wisconsin became the 26th right-to-work state in the nation.

Stopping these assaults on women's lives will require the kind of disruptive and unapologetic actions that the Black Lives Matter Movement and the Fight for 15 have demonstrated are effective at shifting the debate and putting pressure on those in power.