One Wisconsin Now Asks: Which Bill, Gov. Walker?

MADISON, Wis. — In a recent campaign television ad Gov. Scott Walker, on record as opposed to abortion even in cases of rape or incest, speaks directly to the camera and tries to minimize the impact of “the bill”. Based on his long track record of supporting, authoring, voting for and signing into law measures that restrict women’s access to healthcare services including abortion, One Wisconsin Now is asking Gov. Walker to clarify which bill he was referring to in his TV ad.

“Scott Walker looked straight into the camera and told the people of Wisconsin he leaves decisions about their healthcare up to women and ‘the bill’ doesn’t change that,” said One Wisconsin Now Executive Director Scot Ross. “But his record shows he’s spent his 20-year political career pushing numerous bills that interfere with decisions women ought to be left to make with their doctors, their families and their spiritual advisors.”

Measures Walker could have been referring to include:

• Cutting funding for women’s health centers, resulting in the recent closure of five clinics providing services to women including cancer screenings;
• Eliminating a requirement that schools provide medically accurate age appropriate instruction;
• Implement a state “gag rule” banning state employees from providing women with information about all their reproductive choices and prohibiting the teaching medical students at the UW about abortion;
• Allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill women’s prescriptions for birth control;
• Eliminating the requirement that insurance coverage for women include birth control;
• Mandating women receive an ultrasound before having an abortion;
• Putting special new requirements on medical doctors performing abortion services.

Gov. Walker has been tagged as “100 percent” by an extremist group espousing banning birth control and making all abortions, without exception, illegal. In an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2010 Walker re-iterated his opposition to allowing abortions even in cases of rape or incest.

Ross concluded, “Gov. Walker has told us that he believes women should be able to make their own decisions. But his career is littered with actions that meddle in women’s private health care decisions. There’s a simple question – and Gov. Walker owes the people of Wisconsin a straight answer – when you looked into the camera, which bill were you talking about?”