Milwaukee Co. Supervisor Deanna Alexander Frets Failing to Defund Planned Parenthood Puts U.S. on Slippery Slope to Revival of Ancient, Ritualistic Human Sacrifice

MADISON, Wis. — In their efforts to impose their beliefs and partisan politics on health care decisions made by Wisconsin families, the rhetoric of state Republicans seeking to limit access to reproductive health care services has gotten pretty extreme. But a recent column by Milwaukee County Supervisor Deanna Alexander, in which she frets that by failing to defund Planned Parenthood the United States could be headed towards a future in which ritualistic human sacrifice is used to appease angry deities, sets a new low.

“The only thing Supervisor Alexander accomplishes here is to show how completely detached from reality she and her fellow anti-choice extremists have become,” according to One Wisconsin Now Research Director Jenni Dye. “There are serious issues at stake with Deanna Alexander and her fellow extremists attempt to limit women’s access to their health care. But by equating comprehensive reproductive health care with ritualistic human sacrifice to appease angry deities she distracts from a serious issue and turns it into a farce.”

In a column posted on the E.W. Scripps media corporation website, Right Wisconsin, run by right wing radio squawker Charlie Sykes, Alexander writes:

As Presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina puts it, “This is about the character of our nation.”

And if we’re willing to turn a blind eye to these highly offensive, anti-woman, illegal and immoral practices, then where would we draw the line as a nation?

Many past civilizations actually sacrificed (murdered) babies on the altars to various gods based on religious belief. Could that woefully regressive, inhumane, and perverse level of immorality be where we’re headed next?

Planned Parenthood provides health care to anyone, regardless of income, ability to pay or insurance status, who visits one of their 22 health centers statewide. They currently serve 60,000 individuals each year with breast and cervical cancer screenings, annual exams, birth control, STD testing and treatment, honest sex education and referrals for prenatal care and mammograms. Earlier efforts by Gov. Walker and legislative Republicans closed five Planned Parenthood clinics in rural areas of Wisconsin, impacting over 3,100 women, men and families that depended on them for care.

Dye noted that while Alexander’s rhetoric is among the most overwrought and disconnected from reality to date, she is far from alone in demonstrating a profound ignorance about the work of Planned Parenthood in Wisconsin.

In the debate on a bill to strip funding from Planned Parenthood for the comprehensive reproductive health care service they provide in Wisconsin, Republican State Representative Janel Brandtjen declared the trusted provider of services is, “nothing more than a maintenance garage that treats women like sex objects.”

Author of numerous anti-reproductive health care initiatives including the state effort to defund Planned Parenthood, Representative Andre Jacque, is a longtime opponent of birth control and women’s access to it. In addition to supporting an amendment to the Wisconsin state constitution that would outlaw most common forms of birth control, Jacque testified in support of allowing employers to deny insurance coverage of their employees birth control because, “… there are places that offer free birth control. You see them on TV late at night.”

Dye concluded, “Alexander’s near-hysterical warnings of the revival of ritualistic human sacrifice are so out of touch they are almost laughable. But the price that will be paid by Wisconsinites because of right-wing efforts to strip access to comprehensive reproductive health care is no laughing matter.”