Health care providers march for abortion rights at a Madison rally in October 2022. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin State Senate passed SB 553 on Tuesday, Nov. 18, in their last floor session of the year. This bill, purportedly written to define abortion, is actually a covert attempt to exclude abortion from the broader scope of reproductive healthcare.
Anti-abortion legislators pushing this bill are attempting to play to their religious base who voted them into office to promote an anti-abortion agenda. This is a failing strategy, however, when we’ve seen in countless elections around the country that abortion access is a winning issue, including in Wisconsin.
The bigger problem, though, is how proponents of the bill are describing it as a way to allow physicians to safely provide care and clarify abortion restrictions, by excluding medical procedures intended to save a person’s life, such as C-sections, the removal of dead embryos, and treatment for ectopic pregnancy, to name a few, from the definition of “abortion.”
Lawmakers are misleading people into thinking that this bill will further define the nuances of care that physicians provide and actually allow, rather than restrict, the provision of care.
This could not be farther from the truth. We have too many examples nationwide of physicians practicing in states hostile to reproductive rights who are unsure about what care is legal to provide, ultimately leading to unnecessary delays in caring for pregnant people. It is telling that physicians who provide miscarriage and abortion care were not called on to write the text of this legislation.
Nationally, we have already seen pregnant people die preventable deaths while waiting for essential care for early pregnancy complications because lawmakers stirred confusion and meddled in healthcare decisions. This bill will amplify those dangers in our state, where 13.2 people out of 100,000 die in pregnancy, childbirth, or 42 days after termination of a pregnancy. A study by researchers at the University of Washington and Massachusetts General Hospital showed that these trends, across race, have been worsening in Wisconsin since 2010.
Black birthing people in Wisconsin account for a disproportionate amount of the disparities in maternal mortality. Adding these racial and systemic inequities to a bill that will delay care for folks across the board, it’s nearly guaranteed that certain groups will have a greater share of these poor outcomes.
As a family medicine and obstetrics physician, I care for folks across the entire spectrum of pregnancy — including miscarriage and abortion. I want to emphasize the similarities in those two scenarios and how they significantly overlap.
The procedure performed for abortion is identical to the procedure performed for a miscarriage. When a person has a miscarriage or an abortion in the first trimester, generally, a procedure called a “manual vacuum aspiration” or “MVA” can be performed to remove the pregnancy contents. For miscarriages or abortions that occur later in pregnancy, the procedure involves dilating the cervix and removing the pregnancy via a procedure called a dilation and curettage (D&C) or dilation and evacuation (D&E), based on gestational age.
Additionally, when managing a miscarriage with medications, physicians use mifepristone and misoprostol — medications that lawmakers and anti-abortion activists are actively seeking to restrict because they’re used identically in first-trimester abortions.
That is the underlying, root issue here: amplifying and reinforcing stigma and criminalization around abortion.
Carving out the definition of abortion doesn’t actually create medical clarity for providers; instead, it creates a stigmatizing health care space where patients have to disclose and justify why they need certain essential health care. People deserve care and compassion, not judgment or punishment.
Whether due to miscarriage, abortion, or self-managed abortion, pregnancy loss is not a crime. People should not fear jail time for getting the health care they need. SB 553 aims to differentiate abortion based on intent — a dystopian concept where politicians are in the private space of a doctor’s office. Wisconsinites currently have an opportunity to combat this stigma and call out politicians who are actively harming patients and the patient/provider relationship.
In my practice already I have seen patients who are hesitant to disclose their pregnancy history for fear that sharing a history of needing abortion care could get them in trouble. Imagine how that influences future decisions to engage with health care providers around miscarriage, abortion and pregnancy complications.
Wisconsin already heavily regulates how medications for miscarriage are prescribed, including a mandatory in-person dispensing requirement. Those of us who offer this care should not need to feel we must pit our medical expertise against legal jargon when it comes to providing normal, essential care. We need people to be able to trust their health care providers, and we need politicians to stop making laws that pigeonhole physicians into even narrower definitions of care.
Now that this dangerous bill has been passed in the Senate, it will next head to the Assembly before ultimately landing on Gov. Tony Evers’ desk. In his seven years in office Evers has consistently vetoed anti-abortion legislation, and he has vowed to veto any bill that would limit access to abortion, including SB 553.
As a physician, it’s devastating to rely on a single individual to preserve my ability to practice safe and necessary health care for countless people and families across the state without political interference.
There is no other type of health care that is regulated in the unique, stigmatizing, harmful way that abortion care is. Our state politicians need to understand that health care decisions should remain between a patient and their trusted provider. SB 553 ignores that and should not become law.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., shown here in September, cited a white paper funded and self-published without peer review by anti-abortion groups as grounds for federal scrutiny of a key abortion medication’s safety. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is facing increasing pressure from abortion opponents and advocates over how it regulates a drug that has become central to abortion access since Roe v. Wade was overturned three years ago.
Abortion medication manufacturers, health care providers and state attorneys general have continued to petition and sue the agency to loosen regulations for mifepristone, a key abortion drug. At the same time, anti-abortion policy leaders have successfully lobbied the Trump administration — on the basis of a self-published white paper funded by anti-abortion groups — to review mifepristone’s safety again and consider reviving old restrictions.
On Thursday, Nov. 13, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the FDA under a federal public records law for refusing to disclose the parameters of its new review, as well as communications with outside groups.
Abortion opponents have called on the FDA to ban telehealth abortion, which has allowed abortion rates to rise slightly nationally despite state bans. A shift in mifepristone regulation could dramatically change abortion access throughout the country, and health advocates and litigators on both sides of this dispute are closely watching how the agency justifies any changes.
Abortion-rights advocates have also seized on a recent federal ruling from a Trump-appointed judge, which orders the FDA to justify its 2023 decision to maintain restrictions on the abortion pill and argues the agency excluded from its review, without explanation, a wealth of research and evidence that it previously accepted.
Reproductive health legal experts say the action could prevent the anti-abortion white paper from being the main thing the agency considers before modifying its policy.
“This is where the debate, both in the courts and the FDA, is taking place, around how it is considering evidence, making sure it is reviewing valid evidence and not junk evidence, and getting really reasoned explanations based in that evidence, as opposed to politics or ideology,” said Diana Kasdan, the legal and policy director for the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law.
Where reproductive health legal experts say the abortion pill has been over-regulated for a drug with a high safety record, anti-abortion attorneys, like senior counsel Erik Baptist of the Christian-right powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom, have been arguing that the drug’s risks are exacerbated by its increased availability. The law firm, which was integral to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, is also representing a Louisiana woman in an abortion medication lawsuit against the FDA.
“The FDA’s actions have created an even more unsafe environment for women,” Baptist said. “We expect the Trump administration to zealously appeal this dangerous decision.”
‘It’s the same data set, essentially’
Putting pressure on FDA’s review team are national anti-abortion policy groups like Americans United for Life, one of several groups that criticized the agency for approving a new generic version of mifepristone this fall. The group is part of a coalition that helped produce and, at the end of April, publicize the white paper on mifepristone’s safety, which U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. soon after cited as the basis for ordering a new review of the drug.
The Ethics and Public Policy Center’s self-published paper analyzed a commercially available data set of all-payer health insurance claims from 2017 through 2023 and found an 11% rate of severe adverse events — 22 times higher than the less than 0.5% rate that’s on the label for mifepristone. Reproductive health researchers have criticized the paper’s broad classification of serious adverse events while noting it also reports low rates of the most serious side effects associated with medication abortion, like sepsis (0.1%), transfusion (0.15%), and hospitalization related to the abortion (0.66%). Meanwhile more than 100 peer-reviewed studies have found low rates of serious adverse effects, including for abortion medication provided through telehealth.
The paper, which has also been cited by lawmakers like U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, did not go through a scientific peer review, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center would not disclose the exact data set used. Spokesperson Hunter Estes previously told States Newsroom the group was not legally permitted to provide the data set but that the paper’s description of it should be enough to replicate the study.
Americans United for Life CEO John Mize said he hopes to see the paper peer-reviewed in the near future. But he said the coalition has for now achieved its goal of convincing the FDA to look at the same insurance claims data set analyzed by the Ethics and Public Policy Center and then do its own analysis.
“What we’ve been told is the FDA is doing their own internal analysis of the EPPC data,” Mize said. “It’s to be seen what the FDA does with methodology. That’s the important component, because the data is the data. It’s the same data set, essentially.”
HHS did not respond to questions about its ongoing mifepristone review or the federal judge’s recent order to review all of the safety data, instead directing States Newsroom to an Oct. 2 post on X from Kennedy defending both the FDA’s review of mifepristone and its approval of a second generic version.
“Recent studies already point to serious risks when mifepristone is used without proper medical oversight,” Kennedy posted. “@US_FDA only approved a second generic mifepristone tablet because federal law requires approval when an application proves the generic is identical to the brand-name drug.”
But if the FDA’s review ultimately draws different scientific conclusions than the anti-abortion movement, Mize said his side won’t stop pursuing challenges to the drug.
“If it comes out that it’s not nearly as dangerous as what EPPC is reporting, and the data appears to be quality and not skewed by politics, then personally, I might take a different perspective,” Mize said. “But I am still fairly confident that a drug that induces abortion at home without clinical oversight is probably something that needs a little bit more scrutiny. … We might continue to fine tune methodology and look at pursuing other avenues of peer review.”
Politicized science
Anti-abortion policy and legal advocates have been lobbying for tighter restrictions on mifepristone since the drug was first approved in 2000, and especially since the FDA started dropping restrictions, such as allowing the regimen to be used until 10 weeks’ gestation instead of seven in 2016. After Roe v. Wade was overturned, the FDA under President Joe Biden’s administration permanently dropped the in-person dispensing requirement, allowing people to obtain the abortion pill via telehealth and through the mail.
But the FDA maintained other regulations, as part of the drug’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, such as requiring prescribers, pharmacists and patients to sign forms agreeing to meet certain qualifications and acknowledging the drug’s common side effects, like heavy bleeding and nausea, and potential severe risks, like infection. Abortion providers have argued that some of the rules are unnecessary and burdensome.
Of the more than 20,000 prescription drug products approved by the FDA, less than 100 have REMS, and many of those are injectables with serious side effects like coma and death. In a quarter century, the FDA has reported 36 deaths associated with, but not necessarily caused by, mifepristone.
U.S. District Judge Jill Otake on Oct. 30 ordered the FDA to review all the relevant safety data on mifepristone, ruling that the agency erred years ago when it failed to justify maintaining strict rules on the drug despite a strong safety record after 25 years on the market. One week later, the U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus sent a letter to Kennedy and FDA Commissioner Martin Makary demanding the ongoing mifepristone review be based on science and evidence.
“That court order reinforces that, in conducting this new review, FDA may not cherry-pick junk science serving an anti-abortion agenda, but must instead look at the full body of evidence both confirming mifepristone’s safety and underscoring the harms of the FDA’s onerous restrictions,” reads the letter obtained by NOTUS. The senators ask HHS to respond by Nov. 28, to questions about the evidence being considered and the methodology.
Anti-abortion research groups also produced new studies for their first legal attempt to reinstate restrictions on mifepristone in a lawsuit filed in 2022. The plaintiffs persuaded a Trump-appointed district court judge to order the FDA to change its policy on the basis of studies funded by the anti-abortion movement that were later retracted by the journal’s publisher because of their methodology. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the case, not on the merits but because plaintiffs did not have proper standing. The high court is expected to consider similar questions again, as at least seven mifepristone-focused lawsuits work their way through the lower courts.
University of Pittsburgh law professor Greer Donley said that to meet the FDA’s policy on approving new drug regulations, the agency will need more than one or two outlier studies as justification.
“To survive arbitrary and capricious review, they have to provide a reasoned decision that’s based on the facts, and if the facts taken as a whole suggest that this is a safe and effective drug, even though there’s one new paper out there that suggests it’s maybe a little less safe than it was before, they’re going to have to justify why that one paper outweighs the 50 papers on the other side that were published in peer-reviewed journals,” Donley said. “I don’t know how they could explain that.”
Donley has studied mifepristone regulation closely and said she watched the science around the medication become increasingly politicized, much more than other drugs. While controversial medicine, like gender-affirming care, involve drugs with multiple purposes, mifepristone was approved for the explicit purpose of ending a pregnancy.
The FDA’s medication abortion regimen involves another drug, misoprostol, which was approved to treat ulcers, and is used off-label for abortions and miscarriages. It has not faced the same scrutiny as mifepristone. Abortion providers have said they would likely pivot to a misoprostol-only regimen if mifepristone were to become much harder to access, which it has even for miscarriages in states that have banned abortion entirely, like Kentucky and Louisiana.
Mifepristone manufacturer Danco Laboratories last year confirmed ongoing efforts to add miscarriage management as an approved use to its drug label. Were that to happen, it could be a game changer for access, Greer said.
“It actually would be a pretty huge deal if they added it,” she said. “Because all of these attacks against mifepristone for abortion, even if they succeed, then mifepristone would theoretically remain on the market for miscarriage care, and then it could be used off-label for abortion.”
Tomorrow, a look at efforts to both reinforce and crack shield laws across the country.
This story was originally produced by News From The States, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Senate Chambers in the Wisconsin State Capitol. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)
During its last floor session of the year, the Wisconsin Senate passed bills Tuesday that would eliminate the annual $325 per pupil revenue increase for school districts, define abortion to not include treatment for ectopic pregnancies and other emergency medical conditions and block state and local dollars from being used on health care for people not legally in the country.
Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) said she is “dismayed” and “disgusted” that lawmakers were not taking up bills that focused on affordability. She said she is open to working across the aisle on the issue.
“Republicans do not care about affordability, and they have no plan about affordability either,” Hesselbein said. “There are no bills on this calendar that will lower prescription drug costs, increase access to health care, lower housing costs or make child care more affordable.”
Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) noted a few of the more than 60 bills lawmakers were scheduled to take up and questioned whether they addressed pressing matters.
“Republicans, who determine the issues and bills we focus on, today are addressing things like exempting tobacco bars from the public smoking ban, delaying the implementation of commercial building code rules,” Keyeski said. “While these may be worthy issues to discuss, I would suggest that it does not meet the threshold of emergent need when families are facing dire economic circumstances. GOP legislators are essentially forcing us to sit idly by and watch Wisconsinites suffer.”
Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) said at a press conference that Democratic lawmakers were just “filibustering” and rejected the claim that Republicans weren’t working to help with affordability in the state.
“We passed a budget which had the second largest tax cut in state history to get money back into people’s pockets for utility bills, for retirees on fixed incomes, for middle class tax cuts. We’re doing everything we can to try to keep things affordable, ending the 400-year veto so taxes don’t go up in the next budget process,” LeMahieu said. “We are very concerned. It seems like Democrats can make these statements, but yet they’re introducing bills that let local governments increase their levies to tax, raise property taxes, and everything else, so it seems a little disingenuous.”
Republicans advance bill to eliminate 400-year veto
The Senate voted to pass a bill that would reverse Gov. Tony Evers’ partial veto that extended school revenue limit increases for 400 years.
Lawmakers during the 2023-25 state budget gave school districts a $325 increase to schools’ revenue limits for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years. When the bill reached Evers’ desk, he exercised his partial veto power, striking two digits and a dash from the years to extend the annual increases through 2425, to lawmakers’ dismay. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in April that the partial veto was within Evers’ powers.
In response, lawmakers introduced SB 389 to eliminate the $325 per pupil school revenue limit increase beginning in the 2027-28 school year. It passed along party lines.
“We’re very concerned with the ruling of the state Supreme Court, but what we want to do is to clarify that the original intent of the Legislature in the budget was to increase school funding for the next budget period,” Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield), a coauthor of the bill, said. “He changed the bill in a way that no governor in the history of the state of Wisconsin has changed [a bill], and that’s very concerning for us because the Legislature is where the voice of a people is supposed to take place, and the governor is supposed to look at that and use his veto authority to determine where he stands on that, but he went far beyond what’s ever been done before.”
Democratic lawmakers defended the revenue limit increases, saying it is helping school districts that have struggled without inflationary increases in state funding.
“As fists clench over the 400-year veto, know this, it doesn’t even make up for inflation. What it does is, it provides a minimum increase for what people can expect,” Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said. “Unfortunately, with this vote, it is trying to go back and trying to actually make a horrible budget even worse by saying not only are we giving you zero dollars in general aid increase…, but more than that, we’re also going to bar the local school district from making up for that gap by being able to allow them to vote for an increased property tax.”
Larson said that the law could have been changed during the 2025-27 state budget process and that it is the state’s fault that property taxes are bearing the brunt of the increases.
“Everybody who voted for the budget, in essence, voted for the continuation of the $325 dollars per pupil increase to be passed on to local taxpayers to make up the difference,” Larson said. “If you had wanted to change it, there were two things that you could have done. One, you could have voted to have that ended and substituted with a different per-pupil increase. Second thing is, you could have had the state actually fund those increases using funds from the increasing general aid or using the vast surplus that we have, taking money from the agriculture manufacturing tax credit [or] anywhere else, and you could have actually funded our kids.”
Redefining abortion
The Senate also passed SB 553, which seeks to redefine abortion to exempt treatments for certain medical conditions including the removal of a dead embryo or fetus, an ectopic, anembryonic or molar pregnancy.
Bill coauthor Sen. Romaine Quinn (R-Birchwood) said during a press conference that he wanted to remove confusion from state statute, saying he is “pro-life” and hasn’t wanted to stop women from being able to receive the medical care that they need.
“Women who need medical attention due to situations of stillbirths, miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies or other related issues, can and should receive the care that they need. That has always been the pro-life position,” Quinn said. “This bill before us today does not ban abortions. It does not restrict abortions, it simply clarifies our laws so that both women and medical providers can do what is necessary in those situations.”
Wisconsin has a web of abortion restrictions in place, including a 20-week ban, but confusion soared in the state after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. An 1849 law interpreted as a near-total abortion ban led health care providers afraid of felony charges to deny care to women who faced miscarriage and life-threatening pregnancy complications.
Recently, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, the state’s largest abortion provider, stopped providing abortion care in part due to federal changes.
Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said the lawmakers were trying to distance themselves from “the horrors that we are seeing in states that have banned and restricted abortion.” The Assembly coauthor, Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) said in September that she introduced it in part because Republicans are getting “killed” on the abortion issue during elections, although she said she favors a total abortion ban.
“Women being turned away from hospital emergency rooms repeatedly, being left to bleed out in Walmart parking lots. In fact, women are dying because they are denied timely abortion care that could easily have saved their lives, and their children left orphaned,” Roys said. “That’s the reality of what it looks like when you ban and restrict access to abortion in this country.”
Recent polling done by Marquette Law School found that abortion policy has declined as a “most important” issue among voters across all partisan groups in 2025 as compared to 2022, although 50% of respondents still said they were “very concerned” and 23% said they were “somewhat concerned” about the issue.
Another recent poll found that 78% of voters support protecting health care professionals from criminal charges related to providing abortion care and 72% of voters favor allowing advanced health care providers like nurse practitioners and midwives to provide abortion care.
Roys said she was also concerned that the bill could push physicians to do emergency C-sections rather than terminate pregnancies as a way of addressing health issues.
“Abortion is a necessary medical procedure that sometimes pregnant people need to save their lives, to preserve their health, to preserve their future fertility, and nothing in this bill is going to change that,” Roys said. “This bill will instead push physicians to force women to have unnecessary C-sections or to induce delivery rather than providing them with abortion. A C-section is much more dangerous. It is much more invasive. It’s major abdominal surgery that takes weeks or months to recover from, and it also impairs a woman’s future ability to be pregnant to have the labor and delivery that she wishes.”
The bill will now go to the Assembly for consideration.
Restricting health care for immigrants
The Senate concurred 21-12 in AB 308, which would prohibit state, county, village, long-term care district and federal funds from being used to subsidize, reimburse or provide compensation for any health care services for a person not lawfully in the United States. Sens. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi), Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) and Jamie Wall (D-Green Bay) joined Republicans in favor.
Bill coauthor Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) said the bill would ensure that Wisconsin doesn’t begin spending large amounts of money on people who aren’t legally in the country. He noted that other states, including Minnesota and California, have rescinded or paused providing coverage for people not legally in the U.S.
“[Illinois] did an audit and found that they had spent nearly $900 million on health care benefits for illegal aliens, about a 200% increase, and then in Minnesota, the Legislature, by bipartisan vote, they voted to end the eligibility for illegal immigrants due to questions about their state’s financial well-being, and then, lastly, wonderful, California. Gov. [Gavin] Newsom recently froze enrollment of illegal immigrants into the state’s medical programs, citing California’s $12 billion budget deficit,” Wanggaard said at a press conference. “We’re looking at something that is really a no-brainer.”
Wisconsin already doesn’t allow immigrants without legal authorization to apply for the state’s Medicaid program, BadgerCare.
There are two programs available to those without legal status outlined on the Department of Health Services website: Medicaid Emergency Services, which provides short-term medical coverage for people who have a medical emergency and aren’t eligible for BadgerCare Plus or Wisconsin Medicaid, and BadgerCare Plus Prenatal Plan, which provides health care coverage for pregnant mothers who are not eligible for BadgerCare Plus due to immigration status or being in prison or jail.
Democratic lawmakers accused Republicans of seeking to make a political point and neglecting to address health care costs and accessibility.
“We are not in an affordability crisis because of less than 1% of BadgerCare funds that are used to save lives,” Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee) said. “This is cruel, it is a mean-spirited bill that is attempting to score cheap political points off of a group that’s already marginalized enough.”
Advocates have warned that the bill could have a “chilling effect,” discouraging people from seeking care when they need it.
“Why is this sort of thing even coming up for discussion? Are we that heartless? Have we really lost our vision for this country?” Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) asked. “These are all messaging to somebody’s base. Terrible people who are coming here to work in our factories, in our fields without the proper papers need to be punished… How heartless are we to make political points? Go ahead and make your god dang political points.”
The Assembly passed the bill in September, so it will now go to Evers for consideration.
Other bills passed by the Senate Tuesday include:
AB 165, which would ban local governments from using tax money to create guaranteed income programs without a work or training requirement. The Assembly passed the bill along party lines in April and the Senate concurred in it 18-15 so it will now go to Evers for consideration.
AB 265, which would require judges to sentence people convicted of human trafficking to at least 10 years in prison, or at least 15 years for trafficking a child, was concurred in in an 18-15 party line vote. Democratic lawmakers expressed concerns about young victims of sex trafficking potentially facing mandatory minimums if they are forced to participate in trafficking, while Republicans brushed away those concerns.
SB 498 passed 17-16 with Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) joining Democrats against it. The bill would place specific freedom of speech requirements into state statute, including barring campuses from restricting speakers on campus, and implement new penalties, including a tuition freeze, if a campus violates any parts of the bill.
SB 394 would make it a Class I felony to damage or graffiti structures, plaques, statues, paintings or other monuments on public property or that is maintained by the state or any county or municipality. It passed 18-15 along party lines.
SB 11, which would require school districts to provide an opportunity for certain federally chartered youth membership organizations, including the Girl Scouts, to give students information about their organizations. It passed by a voice vote. The Assembly is scheduled to vote on the bill on Wednesday.
SB 16, which would make the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association subject to open records and open meeting laws, passed 22-11.
This story was originally published by ProPublica.
The most powerful Republican in Wisconsin stepped up to a lectern that was affixed with a sign reading, “Pro-Women Pro-Babies Pro-Life Rally.”
“One of the reasons that I ran for office was to protect the lives of unborn children,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told the cheering crowd gathered in the ornate rotunda of the state Capitol. They were there on a June day in 2019 to watch him sign four anti-abortion bills and to demand that the state’s Democratic governor sign them. (The governor did not.)
“Legislative Republicans are committed to protecting the preborn because we know life is the most basic human right,” Vos promised. “We will continue to do everything we can to protect the unborn, to protect innocent lives.”
Now, however, Vos has parted with some in the national anti-abortion movement in its push for a particular measure to protect life: the life of new mothers.
Many anti-abortion Republicans have supported new state laws and policies to extend Medicaid coverage to women for a year after giving birth, up from 60 days. The promise of free health care for a longer span can help convince women in financial crises to proceed with their pregnancies, rather than choose abortion, proponents say. And many health experts have identified the year after childbirth as a precarious time for mothers who can suffer from a host of complications, both physical and mental.
Legislation to extend government-provided health care coverage for up to one year for low-income new moms has been passed in 48 other states — red, blue and purple. Not in Arkansas, where enough officials have balked. And not in Wisconsin, where the limit remains two months. And that’s only because of Vos.
The Wisconsin Senate passed legislation earlier this year that would increase Medicaid postpartum coverage to 12 months. In the state Assembly, 30 Republicans have co-sponsored the legislation, and there is more than enough bipartisan support to pass the bill in that chamber.
But Vos, who has been speaker for nearly 13 years and whose campaign funding decisions are considered key to victory in elections, controls the Assembly. And, according to insiders at the state Capitol, he hasn’t allowed a vote on the Senate bill or the Assembly version, burying it deep in a committee that barely meets: Regulatory Licensing Reform.
Vos’ resistance has put him and some of his anti-abortion colleagues in the odd position of having to reconcile their support for growing families with the failure of the Assembly to pass a bill aimed at helping new moms stay healthy.
“If we can’t get something like this done, then I don’t know what I’m doing in the Legislature,” Republican Rep. Patrick Snyder, the bill’s author and an ardent abortion foe, said in February in a Senate hearing.
Reached by phone, Vos declined to discuss the issue with ProPublica and referred questions to his spokesperson, who then did not respond to calls or emails. Explaining his opposition, Vos once said, “We already have enough welfare in Wisconsin.” And in vowing to never expand Medicaid, he has said the state should reserve the program only for “those who truly need it.”
His stance on extending benefits for new mothers has troubled health care professionals, social workers and some of his constituents. They have argued and pleaded with him and, in some cases, cast doubt on his principles. ProPublica requested public comments to his office from January 2024 to June 2025 and found that the overwhelming majority of the roughly 200 messages objected to his stance.
“I know this is supported by many of your Republican colleagues. As the ‘party of the family’ your opposition is abhorrent. Get with it,” one Wisconsin resident told the speaker via a contact form on Vos’ website.
Another person who reached out to Vos chastised him for providing “lame excuses,” writing: “The women of Wisconsin deserve better from a party that CLAIMS to be ‘pro-life’ but in practice, could care less about women and children. We deserve better than you.”
‘A commonsense bill’
Donna Rozar is among the Wisconsin Republicans who staunchly oppose abortion but also support Medicaid for new mothers.
While serving as a state representative in 2023, she sponsored legislation to extend the coverage up to one year. Her effort mirrored what was happening in other states following the end of Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion. Activists on both sides of the abortion issue recognized that there could be a rise in high-risk births and sought to protect mothers.
“I saw this as a pro-life bill to help mothers have coverage for up to a year, in order to let them know that they would have the help they needed if there were any postpartum complications with their pregnancy,” said Rozar, a retired registered nurse. “I thought it was a commonsense bill.”
Vos, she said, would not allow the bill to proceed to a vote even though it had 66 co-sponsors in the 99-person chamber. “The speaker of the state Assembly in Wisconsin is a very powerful individual and sets the agenda,” she said.
Rozar recalled having numerous “frustrating” conversations with Vos as she tried to persuade him to advance the legislation. “He was just so opposed to entitlement programs and any additional expenditures of Medicaid dollars that he just stuck to that principle. Vehemently.”
Donna Rozar, a Republican former state representative from Marshfield, sponsored legislation in 2023 to extend Medicaid coverage for mothers but said Assembly Speaker Robin Vos wouldn’t even allow a vote on the bill. She is seen at Gov. Tony Evers’ State of the State address on Jan. 24, 2023, in Madison, Wis. (Drake White-Bergey / Wisconsin Watch)
Vos has argued as well that through other options, including the Affordable Care Act, Wisconsinites have been able to find coverage. While some new mothers qualify for no-cost premiums under certain ACA plans, not all do. Even with no-cost premiums, ACA plans typically require a deductible or co-payments. And next year, when enhanced premium tax credits are due to expire, few people will be eligible for $0 net premiums unless Congress acts to change that.
Rozar lost her race for reelection in August 2024 after redistricting but returned to the state Capitol in February for a Senate hearing to continue advocating for the extension. She was joined by a variety of medical experts who explained the extreme and life-threatening risks women can face in the first year after giving birth.
They warned that without extended Medicaid coverage, women who need treatment and medication for postpartum depression, drug addiction, hypertension, diabetes, blood clots, heart conditions or other ailments may be unable to get them.
One legislative analysis found that on average each month, 700 women fell off the Medicaid rolls in Wisconsin two months after giving birth or experiencing a miscarriage because they no longer met the income eligibility rules.
Justine Brown-Schabel, a community health worker in Dane County, told senators of a new mother diagnosed with gestational diabetes who lost Medicaid coverage.
“She was no longer able to afford her diabetes medication,’’ Brown-Schabel said. “Not only did this affect her health but the health of her infant, as she was unable to properly feed her child due to a diminishing milk supply.”
She described another new mother, one who had severe postpartum depression, poor appetite, significant weight loss, insomnia and mental exhaustion. Sixty days of Medicaid coverage, Brown-Schabel said, “are simply not enough” in a situation like that.
Currently, new moms with household incomes up to 306% of the poverty line (or $64,719 a year for a single mom and baby) can stay on Medicaid for 60 days after birth. But the mother must be below the poverty line ($21,150 for that mom and baby) to continue with coverage beyond that. The new legislation would extend the current protections to a year.
Bipartisan unity on the legislation is so great that Pro-Life Wisconsin and the lobbying arm of the abortion provider Planned Parenthood, which offers some postpartum services, both registered in support of it before the Senate.
“It’s something that we can do and something that’s achievable given the bipartisan support for it,” Matt Sande, a lobbyist for Pro-Life Wisconsin, said in an interview. “It’s not going to break the bank.”
Once fully implemented, the extended coverage would cost the state $9.4 million a year, according to the state Legislative Fiscal Bureau. The state ended fiscal year 2025 with a budget surplus of $4.6 billion.
With the Assembly bill buried by Vos, Democratic Rep. Robyn Vining tried in July to force the issue with a bit of a legislative end run. She rose during floor debate on the state budget and proposed adding the Medicaid extension to the mammoth spending bill.
All of the Republicans who had signed on to the Medicaid bill, except one absent member, voted to table the proposal, sinking the amendment. They included Snyder, the bill’s sponsor, who in an email to ProPublica labeled the Democrats’ move to raise the issue during floor debate “a stunt.”
“Democrats were simply more concerned with playing political games to garner talking points of who voted against what, than they were in supporting the budget negotiated by their Governor,” he said.
Said Vining of the Republicans who tabled the amendment: “They’re taking marching orders from the speaker instead of representing their constituents.”
Well-funded opposition
Vos’ opposition echoes that of influential conservative groups, including the Foundation for Government Accountability, a Florida think tank that promotes “work over welfare.” Its affiliated lobbying arm openly opposed the Medicaid extension for new moms when it first surfaced in Wisconsin in 2021, though it has not registered opposition since then. Reached recently, a spokesperson for the foundation declined to comment.
Over the past decade, the foundation has received more than $11 million from a charitable fund run by billionaire Richard Uihlein, founder of the Wisconsin-based shipping supplies company Uline. In recent years, Uihlein and his wife, Liz, also have been prolific political donors nationally and in the Midwest, with Vos among the beneficiaries.
Since 2020, Liz Uihlein has given over $6 million to Wisconsin’s Republican Assembly Campaign Committee, which is considered a key instrument of Vos’ power. And in February 2024, she donated $500,000 to Vos’ personal political campaign at a time when he was immersed in a tough intraparty skirmish.
One concern cited by extension opponents such as the Foundation for Government Accountability is that Medicaid coverage for new moms could be used for health issues not directly related to giving birth. Questions over how expansive the coverage would be spilled into debate in Arkansas in a Senate committee in April of this year.
“Can you explain what that coverage is? Is it just like full Medicaid for any problem that they have, or is it somehow specific to the pregnancy and complications?” asked GOP Sen. John Payton.
A state health official told him new mothers could receive a full range of benefits.
“Like, if they needed a knee replacement, I mean, it’d cover it?” Payton said.
“Yes,” came the reply.
The bill failed in a voice vote.
In Wisconsin, no lawmaker voiced any such concern during the February Senate hearing, which was marked by only positive feedback. In fact, one lawmaker and some medical experts in attendance openly snickered at the thought that Arkansas — a state that ranks low in public health measurements — might pass legislation before Wisconsin, leaving it the lone holdout.
Ultimately, the Wisconsin Senate approved the legislation 32-1 in April, sending it along to the Assembly to languish and leaving Wisconsin still in the company of Arkansas on the issue.
Despite the setbacks and Vos’ firm opposition, Sande of Pro-Life Wisconsin and other anti-abortion activists are not giving up. He thinks Vos can be persuaded and the bill could move out of its purgatory this winter.
“I’m telling you that we’re hopeful,” Sande said.
Rozar is, too, even though she is well aware of Vos’ unwavering stance. “He might have egg on his face if he let it go,” she said.
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Wisconsin lawmakers heard testimony Wednesday about a proposal to define abortion in state law, which Republican supporters say will clear up fears that abortion restrictions will also affect miscarriage management.
Signs at a pro-life rally outside of the Republican National Convention in 2024. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner.)
The Republican author of a bill that seeks to distinguish treatment for an ectopic pregnancy and other medical conditions from abortion said her bill was a reaction to Republicans struggling on the issue during elections and that she wants to ban abortion from conception.
Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) and Sen. Andre Jacque (R-New Franken) introduced the bill in September and it will receive a public hearing on Wednesday in the Senate Licensing, Regulatory Reform, State and Federal Affairs committee.
The authors have framed the bill as one to help clarify Wisconsin’s laws surrounding abortion by redefining certain medical procedures as not abortions.
At a September town hall posted to YouTube, hosted by the Wisconsin Conservative Coalition (WCC), a nonpartisan association of three conservative groups from the northeast part of the state, Goeben participated on a panel with Jacque and Reps. Nate Gustafson (R-Omro) and Paul Tittl (R-Manitowoc).
“It’s very simple,” Goeben said of her bill. “It is taking out the molar pregnancy, ectopic pregnancy — all of these things that we wouldn’t think of that as an abortion, but when there is an election we get killed on that on an emotional stance of, “Oh, this woman was going to die because she couldn’t get her health care,” Goeben said.
During the 2024 elections, Republicans lost 14 legislative seats under Wisconsin’s new voting maps. In many of those races, abortion was a major discussion point for Democratic candidates who criticized their Republican opponents for their positions on the issue.
More will be at stake in 2026 for Republicans, who will be fighting to hold onto the majorities in the Senate and Assembly that they have held for 15 years. Democrats would need to win an additional five seats in the Assembly and an additional two in the Senate to flip each of those houses in 2026.
According to recent polling by Marquette Law School, abortion policy has declined as a “most important” issue among voters across all partisan groups in 2025 as compared to 2022, although 50% of respondents still said they were “very concerned” and 23% said they were “somewhat concerned” about the issue.
After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending federally protected abortion rights, health care providers in Wisconsin worried about criminal penalties under an 1849 law considered a near-total abortion ban denied care to women who faced miscarriage and life-threatening pregnancy complications.
But Goeben called claims that women are restricted from receiving health care under restrictive abortion laws are “an out and out lie.”
Her bill, she said, takes away ammunition from Democrats who criticize abortion bans as harmful to women. “I would love to see our Democrat friends vote against this bill because it is, again, simply defining — these things are not abortion,” Goeben said.
Abortion access in Wisconsin has been in flux since the overturn of Roe v. Wade. For about 15 months, abortion access was effectively eliminated. The state Supreme Court then found in 2023 that the 1849 law no longer applied to abortion since subsequent laws regulating abortion had been passed after 1849, making abortions up to 20 weeks legal.
Strict abortion laws have also resulted in high-profile cases in states including Texas and Georgia where women have died preventable deaths because they were denied timely care.
In recent months, access at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, the state’s largest provider of abortion services, was paused due to federal changes and then restarted about a month later. The upheaval in access has caused confusion among patients and providers as reported by Wisconsin Public Radio.
Some medical experts told the Wisconsin Watch that Goeben’s bill is misleading because it attempts to distinguish medical procedures that end pregnancy under certain circumstances from abortion, which it defines as not including those circumstances.
Goeben said during the September panel discussion that she hopes the state eventually reverts to banning abortion at conception and told attendees that they could make that possible by helping elect candidates who align with their beliefs on the issue.
“[The bill], unfortunately, isn’t changing the 20 weeks, which I hope at some point we can go back to conception, which is where life begins,” Goeben said. “You need to get online and educate and you need to vote in primaries for people who are 100% pro-life. We are going to have upcoming elections in safe seats. In those safe, conservative seats, are you getting a candidate who is 100% pro-life and is going to stand for that because there are people who are going to run in those seats who are not.”
The Trump Administration yanked more than $65 million in Title X funding from clinics nationwide in April, and some of that funding is still frozen, leaving clinics struggling to offer free or low-cost contraception and other family planning services. Some states are suing to get the funding back, but Idaho officials chose to forego it due to a conflict with state law. (Getty Images)
The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare quietly declined the entirety of its annual $1.5 million federal Title X funding, leaving patients statewide without free and low-cost contraception and reproductive health care services from a key family planning program.
Though thousands of Idahoans relied on the health care provided through Title X for over 50 years, the state made no public announcements as the decision took effect in April, leading to the closure of 28 out of 43 — about 65% — Title X-funded family planning clinics in public health districts throughout the state, according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.
After turning down the Title X money entirely, Health and Welfare said there are no plans for the state to make up the difference by increasing the family planning budget.
In one district, Eastern Idaho Public Health, spokesperson Brenna Christofferson said contraception services are no longer available at all, which has only been communicated to existing Title X patients. Sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, and breast and cervical cancer screenings are still provided using different funding sources.
Many of the clinics closed in eastern Idaho, including more populated cities such as Twin Falls and Idaho Falls, and more rural areas such as Salmon, Rexburg and Rigby. Title X services also ended at clinics like Terry Reilly Health Services in one of southwestern Idaho’s most populous areas of Nampa and Caldwell.
The decision to forego the funds came at the same time the Trump administration yanked more than $65 million in Title X funding from Planned Parenthood clinics and some independent reproductive health clinics across the country, much of which is still frozen, including for Idaho’s last remaining Planned Parenthood in Meridian. Spokesperson Nicole Erwin said Planned Parenthood continues to fundraise to help offset costs and keep family planning services affordable on a sliding scale.
Although Idaho’s move came at the same time national attention was focused on the frozen funds, it was a separate decision, according to Health and Welfare.
“The discontinuation of Title X funding … was not related to the federal administration’s Title X policy changes earlier this year,” said AJ McWhorter, spokesperson for the Health and Welfare Department. “The department made the decision to decline the funding to remain compliant with current Idaho laws concerning parental rights and counseling on pregnancy options.”
Nationally, seven out of 16 grantees have had their funding restored, while others have been waiting nearly seven months for resolution, said Clare Coleman, president and CEO of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association.
“For Idaho to walk away from the money doesn’t just disadvantage and imperil young people, it imperils all the people in the state,” she said. “It hurts women, it hurts men, and it hurts young people.”
Coleman’s organization sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services over the frozen funds, and the case is still pending. A coalition of 20 Democratic-led states sued federal government agencies in July to halt its actions related to several social safety net programs, including Title X. That case is paused while the government is shut down.
In 2023, U.S. Health and Human Services reported Title X provided care to nearly 3 million people nationwide, a 7% increase from the prior year. Under the program guidelines, people with family income levels at or below 100% of the federal poverty level can receive services free of charge, while those making up to 250% of the federal poverty level pay a discounted rate on a sliding scale.
The program, established by Congress and signed by former Republican President Richard Nixon in 1970, is intended to prioritize low-income or uninsured people, including those who make too much to qualify for Medicaid, who may not otherwise have access to family planning and reproductive health services. Abortion services cannot be covered by Title X dollars.
Pregnancy options and parental consent
The federal statute guiding the administration of Title X funds includes a section on adolescent services that says grantees cannot require the consent of parents or guardians before or after the minor has requested or received family planning services. Another section directs grantees to allow pregnant patients the opportunity to receive information and counseling regarding prenatal care and delivery, infant care, foster care, adoption and pregnancy termination. Idaho has a near-total abortion ban with few exceptions.
Idaho’s Legislature passed Senate Bill 1329 in 2024, requiring parental consent for “the furnishing of health care services” to a child, with the exception of lifesaving care. Idaho Capital Sun reported the law has also created difficulties for the state’s suicide hotline, because some minors need permission from a parent to receive certain services.
Coleman said the adolescent and pregnancy options requirements have long been part of Title X guidance, and it has not conflicted with state law because federal law should take precedence under the U.S. Constitution.
Idaho is one of at least two states that currently has no Title X funding, Coleman said, after Utah lost all of its Title X money when the Trump administration withheld funding from Planned Parenthood clinics, which were the only places offering those low-cost or free services. Planned Parenthood of Utah closed two of its centers — in Logan and St. George — in the wake of the decision to freeze funding. Logan is less than an hour away from eastern Idaho’s border.
Some states were temporarily left without Title X providers after the Trump administration’s actions in April, but the funding was restored at later dates for certain states, including Missouri and Mississippi. The federal health agency also restored funds in May for two states with abortion bans, Tennessee and Oklahoma, whose grants were revoked under Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration because of their refusal to include abortion among the options during pregnancy counseling.
In a letter from HHS to Tennessee state officials providing notice of the award, the acting chief grants management officer wrote, “Tennessee is one of only two states to have lost funding for failure to comply with the Title X 2021 regulations requiring counseling and referral for abortion. The department is declining to enforce this provision against the state, and you may rely on this letter to that effect.”
A total of 7,528 Title X clients were served across Idaho in 2024, McWhorter said. The 15 remaining family planning clinics are supported by other funds, and additional service sites may be added as funding becomes available. Those clinics are in two out of the state’s seven public health districts, which served about 1,400 people combined in 2024.
The closures add another challenge in an already difficult landscape for sexual and reproductive health care in Idaho. A recent study found that 94 of 268 practicing OB-GYNs left Idaho between August 2022 and December 2024, and care is becoming harder to obtain, according to residents, who say wait times are longer and certain treatment is unavailable locally.
Coleman said under Biden’s administration, when an entity lost Title X dollars for noncompliance or other reasons, there was an effort to reallocate the funding to another willing participant. Without that action, it would revert back to the U.S. Treasury, and the next opportunity for another Idaho entity to apply for Title X funding will be late 2026.
Preventing unplanned pregnancies
Amy Klingler, a clinician in rural eastern Idaho, told States Newsroom she was devastated by the closure of Eastern Idaho Public Health’s family planning clinic. She worked there in addition to another clinical job since 2006 and said there aren’t many other options for family planning care in that area of the state.
“Idahoans don’t trust doctors, but they trust their doctor,” Klingler said. “So when we see rural health care being eroded and doctors leaving Idaho or not coming to Idaho, I think that is really going to impact the health of people in our communities.”
The additional cuts to Planned Parenthood through Medicaid, along with overall Medicaid cuts that may force the closure of more rural hospitals and clinics, will force people to delay care until they are sicker and require more expensive medical care, Klingler said.
The minor consent for treatment bill had good intentions, she said, and in an ideal world, every child would feel comfortable talking to their family members about birth control. But she said she is confident there are young women who don’t get birth control because they don’t want to have that conversation with their parents.
And with Idaho’s abortion ban, unplanned pregnancies either have to be carried to term or the person must go to another state where abortion is legal. It’s also a felony in Idaho for someone to take a minor to another state for an abortion without parental permission.
“Providing free birth control is really powerful if you’re trying to prevent unplanned pregnancies,” Klingler said.
On her last day at the family planning clinic in June, Klingler said the staffers cried together.
“We often ended the day by saying, ‘We did some really good work today,’” she said. “And to not be able to do that good work kind of hurts the heart.”
This story was originally produced by News From The States, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, abortion policy and availability has been in flux in Wisconsin, and providers and advocates say it can leave patients confused.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin will resume abortion services in the state nearly a month after pausing them due to cuts to Medicaid under President Donald Trump's tax and spending law.
A Planned Parenthood Clinic in downtown Milwaukee. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin is restarting abortion services after a nearly month-long pause due to a federal budget and tax law that threatens to withhold Medicaid funding from organizations that provide abortion services.
The organization paused services on Oct. 1, due to a provision in the federal megabill signed by President Donald Trump that bars Medicaid payments for one year to organizations that received more than $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements in fiscal year 2023 and primarily engage in family planning services and reproductive health and provide abortions. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin had said the pause was temporary as they explored options for being able to resume.
The federal Hyde Amendment has prohibited federal funds from being used to pay for most abortion care for nearly five decades, but the new provision, which expires in July 2026, expands that prohibition to cover all Medicaid-covered services at clinics that also provide non-covered abortions.
“Providing compassionate, high-quality care to our patients has always been our mission — and it always will be,” President and CEO Tanya Atkinson said in a statement. “At a time when politicians are working to take away health care from women and families, we are fighting back with everything we have. We’ve been here before. We’ve stood up to relentless attacks on reproductive health for decades — and we are not backing down now. Our patients deserve nothing less.”
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin said that it decided to relinquish its “Essential Community Provider” designation, so it won’t meet the definition of a “prohibited entity” under federal law and won’t be barred from receiving Medicaid funds even while it provides abortion services.
According to KFF, Essential Community Providers are “safety net clinics and hospitals” that serve predominantly low-income, medically underserved patients. The federal Affordable Care Act requires that Qualified Health Plans available through the federal or state insurance Marketplaces include a “sufficient number and geographic distribution of ECPs, where available, to ensure reasonable and timely access to a broad range of such providers for low-income, medically underserved individuals in the plan’s service area.”
A Sept. 29 court filing from attorneys on behalf of Health and Human Services stated that organizations could continue billing Medicaid by ceasing abortion, or by relinquishing their tax-exempt status, or relinquishing their Essential Community Provider status.
Atkinson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that it was unclear what the implications of giving up the ECP status might be, including whether it will affect its financial situation.
“What we do know is that the vast majority of our patients really rely on BadgerCare as their form of insurance, and our focus is on providing as much care as we possibly can to as many people as we can across the entire state,” Atkinson said.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin — the largest provider for abortion services in the state — offers abortion services at its clinics in Madison, Milwaukee and Sheboygan.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin resumed scheduling abortions on Monday after a nearly monthlong pause due to federal Medicaid funding cuts in President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill that took effect at the beginning of October.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin said it was able to resume scheduling abortions as of noon on Monday because it no longer fits the definition of a “prohibited entity” under the new federal law that took effect this month and can receive Medicaid funds.
The organization said it dropped its designation as an “essential community provider” as defined under the Affordable Care Act. Dropping the designation will not result in changes to the cost for abortions or other services or affect the organization’s funding, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin President and CEO Tanya Atkinson said.
“At this point, in all of our research and analysis, we really shouldn’t see much of an impact on patient access,” she said. “If relinquishing this does ultimately impact our bottom line, then we will have to understand what that path forward is.”
A national fight over abortion funding
Abortion funding has been under attack across the U.S., particularly for affiliates of Planned Parenthood, the biggest provider. The abortion landscape has shifted frequently since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2022 that allowed states to ban abortion. Currently, 12 states do not allow it at any stage of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, and four more ban it after about six weeks’ gestation.
Planned Parenthood has warned that about half its clinics that provide abortion could be closed nationwide due to the ban in the new federal law on Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood for services other than abortion.
Wisconsin, where abortion is legal but the Republican-controlled Legislature has passed numerous laws limiting access, was the only state where Planned Parenthood paused all abortions because of the new federal law, Atkinson said.
Because of the complexities and varieties of state abortion laws, Planned Parenthood affiliates are responding to the new federal law in a variety of ways, Atkinson said. In Arizona, for example, Planned Parenthood stopped accepting Medicaid but continued to provide abortions.
The move in Wisconsin is “clearly aimed at sidestepping” the federal law, Wisconsin Right to Life said.
“Planned Parenthood’s abortion-first business model underscores why taxpayer funding should never support organizations that make abortion a priority,” said Heather Weininger, executive director of Wisconsin Right to Life. “Women in difficult circumstances deserve compassionate, life-affirming care — the kind of support the pro-life movement is committed to offering.”
Impact on Wisconsin abortion clinics
In Wisconsin, pausing abortions for the past 26 days meant that women who would normally go to clinics in the southeastern corner of the state instead had to look for other options, including traveling to Chicago, which is within a three-hour drive of the Planned Parenthood facilities.
Affiliated Medical Services and Care for All also provide abortions at clinics in Milwaukee.
Atkinson said it was “really, really difficult to say” how many women were affected by the pause in services. She did not have numbers on how many women who wanted to have an abortion since the pause went into effect had to seek services elsewhere.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin serves about 50,000 people, and about 60% of them are covered by Medicaid, the organization said.
Given those numbers, the priority was on finding a way to continue receiving Medicaid funding and dropping the “essential community provider” status, Atkinson said.
Wisconsin is part of a multistate federal lawsuit challenging the provision in the law. A federal appeals court in September said the government could halt the payments while a court challenge to the provision moves ahead.
Ramifications for Medicaid
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin cited a Sept. 29 court filing on behalf of U.S. Health and Human Services that said family planning organizations could continue billing Medicaid if they gave up either their tax-exempt status or the “essential community provider” designation.
By giving up that designation, it no longer fits the definition of “prohibited entity” under the federal law and can continue to receive federal Medicaid funds, the organization said. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin is not giving up its tax-exempt status.
The “essential community provider” designation was originally given to organizations to help make it easier for them to be considered in-network for billing with private health insurers, Planned Parenthood said.
Atkinson called it a “nuanced provision” of the law and she does not anticipate that giving it up will affect Planned Parenthood’s ability to continue providing abortions and other services.
Planned Parenthood provides a wide range of services including cancer screenings and sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment. Federal Medicaid money was already not paying for abortion, but affiliates relied on Medicaid to stay afloat. Services other than abortion are expected to expand in light of the new law.
Planned Parenthood performed 3,727 abortions in Wisconsin between Oct. 1, 2023, and Sept. 30, 2024, the group said.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Protesters hold signs opposing the Supreme Courts draft ruling on Roe vs. Wade on May 14, 2022, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. (Angela Major / WPR)
A new Republican bill that would exempt certain life-saving medical procedures from falling under the definition of “abortion” is drawing criticism from medical professionals despite being described by its authors as an attempt to protect reproductive health care.
Under the bill, introduced on Friday, medical procedures “designed or intended to prevent the death of a pregnant woman and not designed or intended to kill the unborn child” would not fall under Wisconsin’s abortion definition. They would also not be subject to state laws prohibiting funding for “abortion-related activities” and Wisconsin’s ban on abortion past 20 weeks.
The bill, authored by Rep. Joy Goeben, R-Hobart, and Sen. Romaine Quinn, R-Birchwood, specifically exempts early inductions or cesarean sections performed in cases of ectopic, anembryonic or molar pregnancies from being considered abortion so long as the physician conducting them makes “reasonable medical efforts” to save both parent and unborn child from harm.
Moreover, the bill would change the definition of “unborn child” in Wisconsin statute from “a human being from the time of conception until it is born alive” to “a human being from the time of fertilization until birth.”
OBGYN Carley Zeal, a representative for the Wisconsin Medical Society and fellow at Physicians for Reproductive Health, said “unborn child” is not a medically recognized term because doctors don’t confer personhood to a fertilized egg or fetus. Legal expert Howard Schweber told Wisconsin Watch he doesn’t expect changing the definition of “unborn child” to begin at fertilization will have a meaningful impact.
Abortion as a political issue hits deep in the heart of Wisconsin, where Marquette Law School polls since 2020 show 64% of all voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Democrats have campaigned in support of eliminating restrictions on abortion, while Republicans, who in 2015 passed the state’s current ban after 20 weeks of pregnancy, have sought to increase restrictions on, penalize or ban abortion completely.
The bill follows multiple successive changes to Wisconsin’s abortion law since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling and returned the issue of abortion to individual states — leaving Wisconsin scrambling to put together a consistent abortion policy.
The new GOP bill also seems to nod toward several high-profile national incidents of patients dying from being denied reproductive care in states with restrictive abortion bans, even when the bans include exceptions for abortion care if a patient’s life is in danger.
One National Institutes of Health study found that after Texas’s abortion ban was passed, maternal morbidity during the gestational period doubled from the time before the law despite it having a medical emergency clause.
Goeben and Quinn stated in a memorandum that their bill seeks to “counter misinformation spread by bad actors” about doctors not performing needed medical care for fear of being criminalized under abortion statutes. Goeben told Wisconsin Watch she consulted with physicians about the bill and believes it will reassure them of their ability to provide this care.
“A doctor may at all times, no matter where the state is at on the abortion issue, feel very confident in providing the health care that women need in these very challenging situations that women face,” Goeben said.
Medical and legal experts weigh in
Both Zeal and Sheboygan OBGYN Leslie Abitz, a member of both the state medical society, the Committee to Protect Healthcare and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said they oppose the bill.
They argue it is an attempt by the Wisconsin Legislature to use “emotionally charged, ideologically driven, non-medical terms” to “interfere with the patient-physician relationship” in medical care.
“The stated goal of the bill — to distinguish between medical procedures from abortion — is misleading because it suggests that abortion care is not an essential part of comprehensive health care,” Abitz said.
“A woman is putting her health and her life at risk every time she chooses to carry a pregnancy, and so she shouldn’t be mandated to put her life at risk.”
Schweber views the bill differently. While a clause in Wisconsin’s 20-week abortion ban statutes already exempts abortions performed for the “life or health of the mother,” he believes Goeben and Quinn’s bill could make hospitals and insurance companies more comfortable with authorizing lifesaving reproductive health care procedures.
“Insurance companies and hospitals or doctors, in order to err on the side of safety, will tell the doctors not to perform a procedure that is medically needed and, in fact, properly legal,” Schweber said. “(This) law is trying to prevent a chilling effect on legal medical procedures.”
Though the bill is not yet formally introduced, the Society of Family Planning, an international nonprofit composed of physicians, nurses and public health practitioners specializing in abortion and contraception science, opposes it.
“The narrative that exceptions to an abortion ban — or redefining what abortion care is — can mitigate the harm of restrictive policies is based in ideology, not evidence,” Executive Director Amanda Dennis said in a statement.
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology has not yet taken a position on the bill, but told Wisconsin Watch that state medical emergency clauses “do not offer adequate protection for the myriad (of) pregnancy complications people experience, resulting in substantial harm to patients” in the case of an abortion ban.
Political reaction to the bill
Prominent Democratic lawmakers, such as gubernatorial candidate Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, have criticized the proposed bill as part of a series of moves by anti-abortion politicians to distance themselves from the “deadly” consequences of abortion bans.
“The way that you protect people from legal jeopardy is by not criminalizing health care,” Roys said. “Goeben’s bill just shows how deadly and dangerous criminalizing abortion bans are. It’s an acknowledgement of the truth, which is that abortion bans kill women.”
Goeben said she is surprised by the opposition because her bill on its own does not introduce any additional penalties to abortion.
“These are the issues that the other side of the aisle has talked about, saying, ‘oh, the poor women that can’t get health care!’” Goeben said. “So I thought honestly that this would be supported by everybody, if we are really concerned about the health care of women.”
She said she would also be open to discussing amendments to the bill, which would include exemptions for abortions performed because of other medical complications such as preeclampsia or maternal sepsis.
Anti-abortion organizations Wisconsin Right to Life, Pro-Life Wisconsin, Wisconsin Catholic Conference and Wisconsin Family Action have endorsed the proposal.
A similar bill by Quinn prior to the Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidating Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban in July died in the Senate last year. Even if the new bill is to pass through the Legislature, Gov. Tony Evers plans to veto it, spokesperson Britt Cudaback told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Looming gubernatorial, attorney general and legislative races in 2026 could decide the future of abortion laws and enforcement in the state. New legislative maps and a national midterm environment that historically has favored the party out of power in the White House gives Democrats their best chance to win control of the Legislature since 2010.
Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the GOP frontrunner for governor, previously supported a bill planning to ban abortion after six weeks, though he has rolled back that position in recent media appearances and deleted all mention of abortion from his website.
Schweber said Wisconsin’s newly liberal majority Supreme Court will decide the future of abortion in the state. The justices must answer the cases being brought to them on whether the state constitution guarantees a right to an abortion.
“Just because the U.S. Constitution does not secure a right to abortion does not mean that Wisconsin or Ohio or Texas constitutionally doesn’t have that right,” he said. “Each state supreme court now has to decide this profound question.”
A new Republican bill that would exempt certain life-saving medical procedures from falling under the definition of “abortion” is drawing criticism from medical professionals despite being described by its authors as an attempt to protect reproductive health care.
Under the bill, introduced on Friday, medical procedures “designed or intended to prevent the death of a pregnant woman and not designed or intended to kill the unborn child” would not fall under Wisconsin’s abortion definition. They would also not be subject to state laws prohibiting funding for “abortion-related activities” and Wisconsin’s ban on abortion past 20 weeks.
The bill, authored by Rep. Joy Goeben, R-Hobart, and Sen. Romaine Quinn, R-Birchwood, specifically exempts early inductions or cesarean sections performed in cases of ectopic, anembryonic or molar pregnancies from being considered abortion so long as the physician conducting them makes “reasonable medical efforts” to save both parent and unborn child from harm.
Moreover, the bill would change the definition of “unborn child” in Wisconsin statute from “a human being from the time of conception until it is born alive” to “a human being from the time of fertilization until birth.”
OBGYN Carley Zeal, a representative for the Wisconsin Medical Society and fellow at Physicians for Reproductive Health, said “unborn child” is not a medically recognized term because doctors don’t confer personhood to a fertilized egg or fetus. Legal expert Howard Schweber told Wisconsin Watch he doesn’t expect changing the definition of “unborn child” to begin at fertilization will have a meaningful impact.
Abortion as a political issue hits deep in the heart of Wisconsin, where Marquette Law School polls since 2020 show 64% of all voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Democrats have campaigned in support of eliminating restrictions on abortion, while Republicans, who in 2015 passed the state’s current ban after 20 weeks of pregnancy, have sought to increase restrictions on, penalize or ban abortion completely.
The bill follows multiple successive changes to Wisconsin’s abortion law since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling and returned the issue of abortion to individual states — leaving Wisconsin scrambling to put together a consistent abortion policy.
The new GOP bill also seems to nod toward several high-profile national incidents of patients dying from being denied reproductive care in states with restrictive abortion bans, even when the bans include exceptions for abortion care if a patient’s life is in danger.
One National Institutes of Health study found that after Texas’s abortion ban was passed, maternal morbidity during the gestational period doubled from the time before the law despite it having a medical emergency clause.
Goeben and Quinn stated in a memorandum that their bill seeks to “counter misinformation spread by bad actors” about doctors not performing needed medical care for fear of being criminalized under abortion statutes. Goeben told Wisconsin Watch she consulted with physicians about the bill and believes it will reassure them of their ability to provide this care.
“A doctor may at all times, no matter where the state is at on the abortion issue, feel very confident in providing the health care that women need in these very challenging situations that women face,” Goeben said.
Medical and legal experts weigh in
Both Zeal and Sheboygan OBGYN Leslie Abitz, a member of both the state medical society, the Committee to Protect Healthcare and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said they oppose the bill.
They argue it is an attempt by the Wisconsin Legislature to use “emotionally charged, ideologically driven, non-medical terms” to “interfere with the patient-physician relationship” in medical care.
“The stated goal of the bill — to distinguish between medical procedures from abortion — is misleading because it suggests that abortion care is not an essential part of comprehensive health care,” Abitz said.
“A woman is putting her health and her life at risk every time she chooses to carry a pregnancy, and so she shouldn’t be mandated to put her life at risk.”
Schweber views the bill differently. While a clause in Wisconsin’s 20-week abortion ban statutes already exempts abortions performed for the “life or health of the mother,” he believes Goeben and Quinn’s bill could make hospitals and insurance companies more comfortable with authorizing lifesaving reproductive health care procedures.
“Insurance companies and hospitals or doctors, in order to err on the side of safety, will tell the doctors not to perform a procedure that is medically needed and, in fact, properly legal,” Schweber said. “(This) law is trying to prevent a chilling effect on legal medical procedures.”
Though the bill is not yet formally introduced, the Society of Family Planning, a nonprofit composed of physicians, nurses and public health practitioners specializing in abortion and contraception science, opposes it.
“The narrative that exceptions to an abortion ban — or redefining what abortion care is — can mitigate the harm of restrictive policies is based in ideology, not evidence,” Executive Director Amanda Dennis said in a statement.
The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology has not yet taken a position on the bill, but told Wisconsin Watch that state medical emergency clauses “do not offer adequate protection for the myriad (of) pregnancy complications people experience, resulting in substantial harm to patients” in the case of an abortion ban.
Political reaction to the bill
Prominent Democratic lawmakers, such as gubernatorial candidate Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, have criticized the proposed bill as part of a series of moves by anti-abortion politicians to distance themselves from the “deadly” consequences of abortion bans.
“The way that you protect people from legal jeopardy is by not criminalizing health care,” Roys said. “Goeben’s bill just shows how deadly and dangerous criminalizing abortion bans are. It’s an acknowledgement of the truth, which is that abortion bans kill women.”
Goeben said she is surprised by the opposition because her bill on its own does not introduce any additional penalties to abortion.
“These are the issues that the other side of the aisle has talked about, saying, ‘oh, the poor women that can’t get health care!’” Goeben said. “So I thought honestly that this would be supported by everybody, if we are really concerned about the health care of women.”
She said she would also be open to discussing amendments to the bill, which would include exemptions for abortions performed because of other medical complications such as preeclampsia or maternal sepsis.
Anti-abortion organizations Wisconsin Right to Life, Pro-Life Wisconsin, Wisconsin Catholic Conference and Wisconsin Family Action have endorsed the proposal.
A similar bill by Quinn prior to the Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidating Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban in July died in the Senate last year. Even if the new bill is to pass through the Legislature, Gov. Tony Evers plans to veto it, spokesperson Britt Cudaback told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Looming gubernatorial, attorney general and legislative races in 2026 could decide the future of abortion laws and enforcement in the state. New legislative maps and a national midterm environment that historically has favored the party out of power in the White House gives Democrats their best chance to win control of the Legislature since 2010.
Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the GOP frontrunner for governor, previously supported a bill planning to ban abortion after six weeks, though he has rolled back that position in recent media appearances and deleted all mention of abortion from his website.
Schweber said Wisconsin’s newly liberal majority Supreme Court will decide the future of abortion in the state. The justices must answer the cases being brought to them on whether the state constitution guarantees a right to an abortion.
“Just because the U.S. Constitution does not secure a right to abortion does not mean that Wisconsin or Ohio or Texas constitutionally doesn’t have that right,” he said. “Each state supreme court now has to decide this profound question.”
Editor’s note: This story was updated to remove an incorrect description of the Society of Family Planning and to include additional background for Zeal and Abitz.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
“We don't have a direct way to overrule what the Republican regime has done in the big, ugly bill,” Sen. Kelda Roys said. “We certainly can do everything we can in Wisconsin to make sure that the existing two independent clinics that provide abortion services are able to see as many patients as they possibly can." (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin paused abortion services Wednesday at its Madison, Milwaukee and Sheboygan locations due to the megabill signed by President Donald Trump in July. The law — officially titled the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act — included a provision that would take away federal funding from the organization if it continues providing abortion services.
The organization announced the pause last week, saying that it was looking to see as many patients as possible before the Oct. 1 deadline. Wisconsin is the first state in the country where Planned Parenthood has taken this step in response to the federal law.
In reaction, Democratic lawmakers called Wednesday morning for the state to reverse other restrictions on the books to help increase accessibility to the remaining independent abortion providers in the state.
“We’re sounding the alarm, but we’re also saying we can do something about this,” Rep. Lisa Subeck (D-Madison) said at a press conference. “We know that this is going to be a legal battle, and there will be other means by which Planned Parenthoods are fighting this change, but in the meantime, we cannot let Republicans block access for Wisconsin women to the care that they need.”
This is the second time that Planned Parenthood is halting abortion services in Wisconsin since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, ending federally protected abortion rights. The group stopped providing abortions from June 2022 until September 2023, when a Dane County court held that a 19th century state statute did not ban abortions. The Wisconsin Supreme Court also ruled in July that the same 19th century law was invalid and unenforceable and had effectively been repealed by other laws passed after it.
Planned Parenthood’s decision to pause services again leaves just two independent clinics that provide abortion care in Milwaukee. Abortion providers in neighboring Illinois have declared that they are prepared to provide services for Wisconsin women.
“We know that people in Wisconsin can go to other states that do not have these restrictions to access abortion care, but we think that that’s unacceptable, and that no matter who you are or where you’re from you deserve the freedom to get the health care that you need here in Wisconsin,” Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said at the press conference.
The public health department for Madison and Dane County offered to help patients in need of services navigate their limited options.
“Losing Planned Parenthood clinics as an option for abortion care means the full spectrum of reproductive health care will become very difficult to access in Wisconsin,” said Public Health Supervisor Sarah Hughes. “We know this changing landscape can be confusing and overwhelming, that’s why our Nurse Navigators are standing by to help people understand all options around pregnancy and reproductive health care.”
Planned Parenthood has been able to use federal funds via Medicaid payments and Title X, a federally funded family planning program, to help provide services other than abortion care, including contraceptives, STI testing, pregnancy testing, and gynecological services to low-income and uninsured individuals. The Hyde Amendment has barred federal money from being used to fund abortion care across the country for decades.
The new federal law puts the other services that Planned Parenthood offers at risk by barring Medicaid payments for one year for organizations that received more than $800,000 in Medicaid reimbursements in fiscal year 2023 and primarily engage in family planning services and reproductive health and provide abortions.
“This was targeted directly at Planned Parenthood,” Subeck said.
“Let me be clear, Republicans in the federal and state governments will stop at nothing short of a full abortion ban,” she added.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its member organizations in Massachusetts and Utah filed a legal challenge in July, but an injunction that was blocking the law from taking effect was lifted in September.
Attorney General Josh Kaul has also joined with other state attorneys general on a legal motion that argues the provision “impermissibly and unconstitutionally targets Planned Parenthood health centers for their advocacy and their exercise of associational rights” and also that “Congress ran afoul of limits on its spending power” because of its ambiguity. It argues the provision “fails to adequately define the scope of providers who qualify as “prohibited entities”; fails to provide clear notice of the timing of its implementation; and constitutes a change that [states] could not have anticipated when joining Medicaid.”
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin has said that ongoing litigation could change what the organization is allowed to do and that it will continue to monitor the legal landscape and will be prepared to act the moment it is able to resume care.
Roys and Subeck introduced legislation Wednesday to help the last two clinics in Milwaukee take in patients.
The Democratic bill would repeal several of the other restrictions on the books in Wisconsin, including a requirement that patients attend two appointments with the same physician 24 hours apart before receiving care, requirements that a patient have a physical exam and that a physician be physically present when medication is taken, and a requirement for an ultrasound. It would expand the number of providers allowed to provide abortion care from just physicians to physician assistants, nurse practitioners and advanced practice registered nurses.
The lawmakers said the bill would help the two independent Milwaukee clinics — Care for All Community Clinic and Affiliated Medical Services — reach as many patients as possible while Planned Parenthood no longer offers services by removing barriers to providing access.
“We don’t have a direct way to overrule what the Republican regime has done in the big, ugly bill,” Roys said. “We certainly can do everything we can in Wisconsin to make sure that the existing two independent clinics that provide abortion services are able to see as many patients as they possibly can and try to absorb some of the loss of service [provided by] Planned Parenthood, and open the door to make sure that patients in Wisconsin don’t suffer access restrictions that patients in other states don’t have to suffer.”
Roys said the purpose of the restrictions “has always been to make abortion as onerous and as difficult for people to access as possible. It has nothing to reduce the need for abortion.” By lifting the restrictions, she said, the bill could help “increase abortion access, despite the federal backdoor abortion ban.”
However, in a Republican-led Legislature, the bill is unlikely to move ahead.
Conservative groups and some Republican lawmakers celebrated the news of the pause in abortion services last week. Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) called the pause in services at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin a “hopeful moment” in a statement last week.
“Every heartbeat silenced by abortion was a life full of possibility,” Goeben said. “This pause means more of those lives may now have a chance.”
Goeben and 11 of her Republican colleagues recently introduced a bill that seeks to narrow the definition of abortion in Wisconsin. According to a bill summary, it would amend the definition of abortion to make an exception for “physician’s performance of a medical procedure or treatment designed or intended to prevent the death of a pregnant woman and not designed or intended to kill the unborn child, including an early induction or cesarean section performed due to a medical emergency or the removal of a dead embryo or dead fetus, or an ectopic, anembryonic, or molar pregnancy, which results in injury to or death of the woman’s unborn child when the physician makes reasonable medical efforts under the circumstances to preserve both the life of the woman and the life of her unborn child according to reasonable medical judgment and appropriate interventions for the gestational age of the child.”
“Democrats should be lining up to sign on to this bill,” Goeben said in a statement about the bill. “This is what liberals have been shouting about from the rooftops for decades. However, they continue to perpetuate the notion women are not going to get the care they need in a heart wrenching emergency situation.”
Physicians, Democratic lawmakers and others have spoken to concerns since the overturn of Roe v. Wade that restrictive state laws governing abortion would result in women not receiving adequate medical care, even when there is an emergency. ProPublica has reported on the preventable deaths of Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, both of whom were denied timely care due to confusion created by Georgia’s six-week abortion ban. It has also reported on two women in Texas, Josseli Barnica and Nevaeh Crain, who died under the state’s restrictive abortion ban after care was delayed for their miscarriages.
Roys said the bill is an example of Republicans trying to distance themselves from the impact of restrictive abortion policies.
“Republicans know that their abortion bans hurt women, and they kill women, and Americans are horrified to see women being arrested and jailed instead of taken to the hospital for treatment when they have a miscarriage. They are horrified to see pregnant people turned away from emergency rooms so that they can bleed out and almost die in Walmart parking lots… and now Republicans are desperately searching for a way to distance themselves from the terrible effects of the laws that they passed. And [to] simply say if you need to end your pregnancy, we’re going to call it something different than abortion is nonsense.”
Roys said the bill is “pernicious” because it would essentially tell providers to provide a C-section or induce labor rather than provide an abortion. Those procedures, she said, are “much more difficult, painful, and risky and invasive than doing an abortion.”
“It affects a woman’s future ability to birth and be pregnant the way that she wants to be, and it is incredibly cruel,” Roys said.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin will stop scheduling patients for abortions starting next week as it works to find a way to provide the service in the face of Medicaid funding cuts in President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill, the nonprofit said Thursday.
Abortion funding across the U.S. has been under siege, particularly Planned Parenthood affiliates, which are the biggest provider. Wisconsin appears to be the first state where Planned Parenthood is pausing abortions because of the new law.
The organization warned earlier this year that about half its clinics that provide abortion could be closed as a result of a ban on Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood for services other than abortion.
The measure was part of the tax and spending law President Donald Trump signed in July. Initially, a judge said reimbursements must continue, but a federal appeals court this month said the government could halt the payments while a court challenge to the provision moves ahead.
Planned Parenthood services include cancer screenings and sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment. Federal Medicaid money was already not paying for abortion, but affiliates relied on Medicaid to stay afloat.
The remaining Planned Parenthood clinics in Louisiana – where abortion is banned – are scheduled to shut down at the end of this month.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin said in a statement that it is trying to see as many patients as possible between now and Tuesday. The federal law takes effect Wednesday. It is not scheduling patients beyond that date, and the organization believes the move will allow it to continue seeing other Medicaid patients. The organization said it was working with providers across the state to make sure patients are referred quickly and receive timely care.
It is also considering taking legal action, the group said.
“Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin will continue to provide the full spectrum of reproductive health care, including abortion, as soon and as we are able to,” Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin President and CEO Tanya Atkinson said in the statement. “In the meantime, we are pursuing every available option through the courts, through operations, and civic engagement.”
The abortion landscape has been shifting frequently since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2022 that allowed states to ban abortion. Currently, 12 states do not allow it at any stage of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, and four more ban it after about six weeks’ gestation.
The bans have resulted in more women traveling for abortion and an increased reliance on abortion pills. Prescribers in states where they’re allowed have been shipping the pills to places where abortion is banned, a practice that is facing some legal challenges and is expected to attract more.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court in July struck down the state’s 1849 near-total ban on abortion, saying it was superseded by newer state laws regulating the procedure. The same day it ruled in that case, the court dismissed a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin asking it to find the law unconstitutional.
Wisconsin’s abortion ban was in effect until 1973, when the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide nullified it. Legislators never officially repealed it, however, and conservatives argued that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned Roe reactivated it.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin stopped providing abortions after that ruling for 15 months before resuming them as the lawsuit over the state law played out. It has been providing abortions at three clinics in Wisconsin for the past two years.
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin serves about 50,000 people across the state. About 60% of them are covered by Medicaid, the organization said.
The federal Hyde Amendment already restricts government funding for most abortions, and less than 5% of the services Planned Parenthood provides are abortions, according to the organization’s 2023 annual report.
Planned Parenthood provides a wide range of services besides abortion. Its most recent annual report shows that contraceptive services and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections make up the vast majority of its medical care. It performs more cancer screening and prevention procedures than abortions, according to the report.
Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Associated Press reporter Christine Fernando in Chicago contributed.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
Aborted fetal cells are not used to manufacture the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine today, though the original rubella vaccine was made using human fetal embryo fibroblast cells obtained from two elective abortions in the 1960s.
The rubella vaccine is one of many vaccines that use the cell lines from those aborted fetuses, meaning they descend from the original fetal cells, but are not taken directly from new fetal tissue. These cells were chosen because the womb’s sterile environment does not contain the viruses often found in animal cells.
During the manufacturing of the MMR vaccine, the vaccine virus is purified and cellular debris and growth reagents are removed, breaking down trace DNA until there is none or almost none left.
Most of the major world religions that oppose abortion, including the Roman Catholic Church, have deemed vaccines permissible to prioritize the health of pregnant women, children and the wider population.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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