The Extremism of Rebecca Bradley: Women’s Reproductive Health Edition

MADISON, Wis. — The views on women’s reproductive health held by State Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley have been consistently extreme and out of step, dating all the way back to her college years. In a column in the Marquette Tribune obtained by One Wisconsin Now, Bradley advocated for the position underlying the so-called personhood movement that would outlaw most common forms of birth control and would outlaw abortion even in the cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother. More recently, Bradley equated birth control with murder and advocated for a state law to allow pharmacists to refuse to fill a woman’s prescription for birth control that has been written by a doctor.

“The radical right wing views of Rebecca Bradley are not an anomaly, confined to just a single instance or place in time,“ commented One Wisconsin Now Research Director Jenni Dye. “She has on multiple occasions, across the years, extolled views on women’s health that are not just extreme and out of touch but dangerous for Wisconsin women and their families.”

In her Marquette Tribune article, Bradley wrote, “… the point at which a human life comes into being is now widely established by the scientific community: When the male and female reproductive cells and their respective nuclear material unite …” The “personhood” movement, supported by radical anti-abortion groups like Pro-Life Wisconsin, seeks to outlaw all abortion and most common forms of birth control by amending state constitutions and changing state laws to grant legal rights to fertilized eggs.

More recently, Bradley echoed her earlier views. In a column she wrote for an online publication prior to her unprecedented three judicial appointment in just three years by Gov. Scott Walker, Bradley again expressed her extreme views – comparing birth control to murder and supporting changing state law to allow pharmacists to refuse to fill a woman’s birth control prescription that has been written by a doctor. When questioned by the media, Bradley through a spokesperson refused to comment on, or disavow, the radical views she expressed.

This week Bradley has been under fire for a series of hateful and venomous attacks on gay people and people living with HIV, according to articles she wrote obtained by One Wisconsin Now, in multiple instances, derisively referred to members of the LGBTQ community as “queers” and “degenerates”, claimed “homosexual sex kills,” mocked the AIDS epidemic and declared the nearly 45 million voters who supported President Clinton were, “either totally stupid or entirely evil.”

Dye concluded, “From her hateful views on people with different sexual orientation or political beliefs than her own to her out of touch positions on women’s health care, Justice Rebecca Bradley has cast her lot with the most extreme right wing. She can’t be trusted treat all people fairly under the law or to protect Wisconsin women and their families from politicians imposing their own beliefs on the sensitive and intensely personal health care decisions that they ought to be able to make for themselves.”