Bill will try to bar UW from giving out pills

A state lawmaker wants to prohibit clinics serving University of Wisconsin campuses from providing students with birth control pills and devices, contending such services promote promiscuity.

Rep. Daniel LeMahieu, R- Oostburg, said he was outraged when he learned University Health Services, the clinic serving UW-Madison students, had taken out ads in the two campus newspapers suggesting students get advance emergency contraceptive prescriptions before leaving town for spring break.

LeMahieu has begun drafting legislation to prohibit university health centers from promoting or providing the medication, known as the morning after pill. But because the pill is just a higher dose of the contraceptive hormones found in birth control pills, LeMahieu said he also will seek to block the university from prescribing all birth control pills. ...

Some women saw in the legislation a return to an era, not too long ago, when birth control was outlawed altogether. It wasn't until a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision that birth control pills and devices could be sold to unmarried couples. Wisconsin was the last state to repeal its ban on such sales, in 1976. ...more

How terribly mean-spirited. These are not high schoolers he is talking about, these are college students. Adults. Grown women. Who apparently are so easily lead that the availability of products to control their reproduction makes them hope right into the bed of any guy that asks. Because college students certainly don't have sex at all if you take away their contraceptive choices. Because college girls never get raped. Because all college guys use condoms, and would certainly step up to the plate and be stand up guys if there was ever an unwanted pregnancy.

<TMI alert>

When I was in college, I had no health insurance and no money. So it was a very good thing for me that UHS was there to provide free basic health care for me. I wasn't very interested in taking the pill, but I was glad to know that the option was there. And then came the month when my period just would not stop. The bleeding went on and on. I'd always been a heavy bleeder, but never like this. It was rather scary. I went to UHS, and they told me that the best option for me would be to get on the pill. I did and the bleeding stopped. Ever since then my periods have been light and regular. It was a life changing experience, in a very good way. Yet it didn't make me start running around having sex with anything that moved. If it had not been for UHS with the free clinic visit and the low-low-low cost pills, I would have continued to suffer.

Since then, I have become a staunch advocate for the pill, and extremely suspicious of anyone who would deny women (and girls) access. If a woman decides not to take the pill (or any other contraceptive) that is her decision. If a woman's doctor wants to advise her not to use a certain form of birth control, that is between them. It is not for pharmacists to refuse to fill valid prescriptions. It is not for legislators (male or female) to declare them forbidden.

Back off, buster!!