Portraits by Francis Ford
Kathleen is a 44-year-old mother of four, a lifelong resident of Wauwatosa and among the 98 percent of sexually active American women who have used birth control at some point in their lives.
One month, in the summer of 2004, Kathleen was late getting started on the patch, so she and her husband used condoms as contraception. One night, a condom broke.
“There was that sinking feeling of, ‘Oh, no,’ ” she recalls.
The couple had made up their minds that they did not want more children. So Kathleen called her doctor, who phoned in a prescription for Emergency Contraception to the neighborhood Walgreens.
But the pharmacist refused to fill the prescription. Kathleen was horrified. How could a pharmacist deny a patient medication that was prescribed by a doctor? After another phone call, the doctor’s staff arranged for her to pick up the Emergency Contraception directly from a doctor’s office.
Kathleen is hardly a political activist, but rather, a typical Tosa mom dressed casually and exuding a “come on in for a cup of coffee” personality. Her Victorian-style home is adorned with flowers and comes complete with piano in the corner, a beginner’s lesson book propped on the music shelf. But the stay-at-home mom, who describes herself as a church-attending Catholic, had suddenly found herself at the center of the latest battle over birth control.
In a tight-knit community like Wauwatosa, it’s not a place she wants to be. In fact, she asked that her last name not be used in this article.
“There’s this lady up the street who says people who have abortions are baby killers,” says Kathleen. “I don’t want people to say to my kids, ‘Your mom’s a baby killer.’ ”
She is not unsympathetic to pharmacists who may have qualms about Emergency Contraception. “But if that’s the way he feels, he shouldn’t be in the business,” she says, adding, “I feel like we’re stepping backward instead of forward.”
Kathleen’s idea of moving forward is not the same as Matt Sande’s. As the legislative director of Pro-Life Wisconsin, Sande sees his organization as the wave of the future. Although he routinely uses technical terms such as “abortifacient,” “chemical abortion” and “the embryonic person,” his message is unmistakable: He wants to ban birth control – from Emergency Contraception to the IUDto the pill, the patch and the shot. While he wouldn’t outlaw condoms and barrier methods, he is uncomfortable with the “contraceptive mentality” they promote.
A 36-year-old father of three young children and a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Sande is from the mold of the young, clean-cut conservative that produced Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, State Assembly Speaker John Gard and U.S. Rep. Mark Green. Sande shares not only their medium height and build but their unequivocally conservative politics.
A former legislative aide and lobbyist for The Wisconsin Hospital Association, Sande works out of Pro-Life Wisconsin’s state headquarters in Brookfield. Well-prepared and articulate, with a 1995 Physicians Desk Reference on an office table, he is willing to chip away at the right to birth control. But he won’t rest easy until there is a U.S.constitutional amendment declaring a fertilized egg a human being with full legal rights. In his view, this would prohibit most contraceptives.
“Once you treat the unborn child – even a single-celled zygote – as a U.S.citizen, then they are protected as such,” says Sande. “And that would include [banning] oral contraceptives that cause chemical abortion.… There are some in the pro-life community who will say we can oppose abortion, but we don’t need to take a position on birth control. That’s pure folly.”
Forty years ago, in the landmark Griswold v. Connecticut decision, the U.S. Supreme Court established the right of married couples to use artificial contraception. For the first time in human history, women could plan when to have children and how many to have. In the decades since, particularly with the court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, the focus has been on abortion. But in recent years, the battle against birth control has escalated to a level few could have predicted.
“The right-to-life machine will not stop when abortions are illegal,” argues Rep. Sheldon Wasserman (D-Milwaukee), an obstetrician/gynecologist who is the Legislature’s only practicing doctor. “They want all forms of contraception banned, and they also want infertility treatments banned.”
The Catholic Church
In the movement to ban legal abortions in the United States, the tactics have been gradual but steady. Anti-abortion activists first centered on eliminating publicly funded abortions for low-income women. They next focused on reducing the number of providers, driving doctors out of abortion services with acts of intimidation and even violence. Making strides in Wisconsin and other states, activists fought successfully to limit the dissemination of information on reproductive health and, bit by bit, won legal restrictions on access to abortion, most notably to minors.
Some abortion rights advocates fear the same tactics are at work today in an attempt to restrict birth control. They point to the wide array of developments – from federal policies funding abstinence-only education in the schools to pharmacists refusing to dispense birth control to attempts to cut funds for family-planning clinics.
Maggi Cage has been an advocate for women’s reproductive rights since 1973, when she and a group of students opened a condom store in downtown Stevens Point to challenge a state law restricting condom sales. A board member of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, she is not surprised that birth control is now the focus of controversy. “I recall very clearly when we warned that if we don’t hold the ground on reproductive choice, the next thing coming down the pike would be birth control,” she says. “Politically, this was all forecast in the mid-1980s.”
While Sande’s Pro-Life Wisconsin stands at the forefront of the anti-birth control movement, the issue of contraception is complicated locally by Milwaukee’s strong Catholic influence among the general population and healthcare institutions.
Aurora Health Care, which is not religiously affiliated, operates the largest hospital/clinic system in Milwaukee. It is followed by two Catholic systems: Covenant Healthcare and Columbia St. Mary’s. Together they run seven multi-care hospitals and 57 clinics.
The dilemma for Catholic institutions is the 1968 encyclical by Pope Paul VI, which reiterated the church’s position that artificial contraception is “intrinsically evil.” While Catholic lay people routinely disregard that prohibition, Catholic institutions cannot, which puts them between a rock and a hard place – adhering to official church policy and following best medical practice on reproductive rights.
That contradiction has resulted in a wink-and-nod arrangement that allows Catholic hospitals to publicly hold to church prohibitions while turning a blind eye to doctors who prescribe birth control in the privacy of their offices.
“In practice, those absolute rules are not being followed,” says Wasserman, who has an office at the Northpoint Medical Clinic affiliated with Columbia St. Mary’s. “Birth control is being used throughout the entire system, both in terms of being on the shelves and personally distributed. And this is no secret.” At the same time, Wasserman says there are some areas where the hospitals more strictly enforce the church position. Elective sterilizations, for example, are not to be performed at Catholic hospitals, creating a quandary for many doctors.
“I think it is wrong that if a woman is having a C–section and she wants a tubal ligation at that time, she isn’t allowed to have both,” says Wasserman. “It is much safer for her, rather than subject her to two operations and two anesthetics.”
Catholic hospitals are required to follow directives by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Directive 52 states unequivocally that “Catholic health institutions may not promote or condone contraceptive practices.” This includes condoms and means that Catholic hospitals and clinics are not to distribute information on methods other than natural family planning. Directive 53 notes that sterilization is prohibited except to cure or alleviate “a serious pathology.”
The directives make special allowances for victims of sexual assault, however. Both Covenant and Columbia St. Mary’s say they will provide Emergency Contraception to a rape victim, but only if she is not pregnant. Emergency Contraception, though, is never to be provided because a woman’s contraception failed or she did not use birth control.
More surprisingly, the directives also cover a doctor’s private practice if they rent office space from Covenant or Columbia St. Mary’s. In fact, adherence to the directives is written into leases for Catholic and non-Catholic doctors alike.
Catholic hospitals do not willingly admit this. But, as Covenant spokeswoman Stephanie Tortorici confirmed, standard language in the lease “explains the expectation that those who lease space from our facilities conduct their business in accordance” with the directives.
Eileen Jaskolski, vice president of Mission Integration for Columbia St. Mary’s, says that “within the walls of the hospital,” the directives are followed. When asked if the hospital restricts doctors in their private practice at buildings owned by Columbia St Mary’s, Jaskolski struggles for an answer. “No one is going to police that medical practice,” she finally says. At the same time, she adds, “If it came to our attention that a physician was prescribing birth control pills as a major part of their practice, we would have to remind them [of the directives].”
Michael Douglas, vice president in charge of ethics for the Wheaton Franciscan Services that runs Covenant, admits there is a tension between meeting the medical needs of the community and complying with the directives. It is clear, however, that the directives will continue to guide policy. “As Catholic healthcare, we need to resolve our own integrity,” Douglas explains. “We can’t meet all the needs of the community around some issues.”
There is strong internal debate among Catholic physicians and administrators about how much to push the directives. “It’s an issue that most people don’t want to talk about,” says Wasserman. “It’s very much like the military policy of don’t ask, don’t tell.”
The fear, however, is that “don’t ask, don’t tell” may turn into “don’t prescribe.”
“If you care about people getting access to contraception for the prevention of disease and pregnancy, don’t write this article,” one healthcare analyst says, believing the article will embolden conservatives to demand that Catholic hospitals clamp down on doctors.
As one doctor notes, “It isn’t just that the directives exist. They have always existed. It is that there are pro-lifers policing them to make sure they are enforced.”
With the selection of a new pope, many are concerned with the direction of church policy. Several people interviewed for this article noted that on January 1, Columbia St. Mary’s dropped its insurance coverage for elective sterilizations and contraception medicines and devices for its 5,600 employees. “We felt that it was essential to make these changes in light of Columbia St. Mary’s commitment to our Mission, Core Values and the Ethical and Religious Directives,” President and Chief Executive Officer Leo Brideau said in a letter to employees.
Covenant stopped covering contraceptive prescriptions for all of its employees in the mid-1990s, also citing the directives.
Columbia St. Mary’s is especially complicated because, until recently, Columbia was a non-religious hospital. As part of the merger, an independent facility within Columbia known as the “Columbia Center” is allowed to perform procedures such as tubal ligations, vasectomies and the insertion of IUDs. When the new Columbia St. Mary’s hospital is completed in 2010, the center will move to Columbia St. Mary’s Ozaukee County campus. At that point, there will be no hospital on Milwaukee’s East Side or Northeast Side providing such procedures.
All of which leads Daniel Maguire, professor of moral theology at Marquette University, to argue that Catholic hospitals are an anachronism. “They are doing nothing that is distinctive to the biblical mission and instead are compromising their medical staff,” he says. “They are imposing their idiosyncratic views on an entire community. They have no right to do that.”
What’s more, Maguire adds, the Catholic policies put doctors in a medically untenable position. “It is absurd to have people who are not [medically] competent telling the competent what to do.”
As a Jesuit institution, Marquette is compelled to follow church teachings. As a result, Marquette enforces church prohibitions against contraception, with one notable exception – Marquette’s employee health insurance provides coverage for birth control.
The Marquette Student Health Service, however, cannot dispense birth control or pamphlets on birth control. Moreover, Planned Parenthood is not allowed to circulate information on campus because the group’s purpose “is to promote abortion and contraception,” says Stephanie Russell, executive director of the Office of University Mission and Identity. The AIDSResource Center of Wisconsin, meanwhile, has been invited onto campus and allowed to distribute materials. But the group has been told not to distribute condoms.
Milwaukee Archbishop Timothy Dolan did not make himself available for an interview. In a statement to Milwaukee Magazine,he said Catholic healthcare has the obligation “to be faithful to the moral teachings of the church, especially its consistent ethic of life.”
Emergency Contraception
On New Year’s weekend, a Milwaukee woman called her doctor for a prescription for Emergency Contraception after her partner’s condom broke during sex. The woman was a mother of six and did not want more children.
On the way home from work, she stopped at her local Walgreens at Teutonia Avenue and Good Hope Road to have the prescription filled. The pharmacist refused, citing religious reasons, and told the woman it wouldn’t do any good to return the next day because by then it would be too late for the Emergency Contraception to be effective.
The woman is not talking to reporters. But according to her attorney, Tricia Knight, the pharmacist publicly berated her client, telling her she was killing her baby. “She was embarrassed, humiliated and felt publicly shamed,” says Knight.
Unsure what to do, the woman waited at Walgreens for another hour to have a prescription filled for a second medication. By that time, it was late. Freezing rain and ice had made roads so treacherous that events throughout the city were cancelled. Her children were waiting for her at home. So she left Walgreens without the contraception and unsure how to get it in time.
Weeks later, she discovered she was pregnant and had an abortion.
According to spokesman Michael Polzin,Walgreens’ 15,000 pharmacists are not required to fill prescriptions that violate their personal beliefs. However, the manager is to make arrangements for immediate transfer to another pharmacy, he says.
While Polzin disputed certain details of the incidents, he confirmed that in both cases, the pharmacists refused to fill the prescriptions.
The pharmacist in Wauwatosa was transferred to another Walgreens store on an unrelated matter, says Polzin, and the pharmacist in the Milwaukee store no longer works for Walgreens.
Wal-Mart, meanwhile, has a long-standing policy against even stocking Emergency Contraception, based on “business factors.” When this reporter called the Wal-Mart pharmacy on East Capitol Drive in Milwaukee to ask if they would fill an Emergency Contraception prescription, a woman answering the phone said, “We don’t stock it and I cannot get it in. I have tried.”
Matt Sande of Pro-Life Wisconsin sees no problem if women have to travel to other pharmacies or healthcare institutions in search of help. “People travel to get healthcare in this day and age,” he says. “Someone’s conscience rights should take precedence over someone’s convenience.”
The refusal by pharmacists to fill Emergency Contraception prescriptions is the latest showdown in the tug-of-war over reproductive rights. Also known as the “morning-after pill,” Emergency Contraception consists of two high doses of the hormones found in birth control pills; it is not to be confused with the RU-486 abortion pill. If taken within 72 hours of intercourse, Emergency Contraception is almost 90 percent effective. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists estimates that a greater access to Emergency Contraception could cut the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions in half.
The debate over contraception hinges on the seemingly arcane questions of exactly when a woman becomes pregnant and how hormonal birth control works. ACOG defines pregnancy as when a fertilized egg implants in the uterus. A pregnancy test cannot come up positive before then. But many in the anti-abortion movement argue that pregnancy begins when a sperm fertilizes the egg. Equally important, they argue that this fertilized egg – smaller than the period at the end of this sentence – should have the same moral and legal rights as a living human being.
In addition, a vocal segment in the anti-abortion movement argues that there may be isolated cases where the pill and similar contraceptives prevent a fertilized egg from implanting. As a result, they argue, such birth control should be considered a method of inducing an abortion.
Contraceptives such as the pill work primarily by preventing ovulation. That they may prevent implantation of a fertilized egg is hotly debated. Even the anti-abortion American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists says it is impossible to say definitively that such contraceptives are an abortifacient and advises members to agree to disagree on this matter.
For many, the debate swirls at clinical and philosophical levels. But for others, such as Carmen Pitre, it seeps into their daily working lives. Pitre is executive director of Milwaukee’s Task Force on Family Violence, anonprofit agency that provides legal advocacy to victims of physical or sexual abuse.
“What I believe is that people who are assaulted deserve competent, respectful healthcare that discusses a range of options,” says Pitre. “We should be restoring dignity, not putting up obstacles.”
Rape victims, she says, should be informed about Emergency Contraception not as an end-all solution but as an option. She credits Aurora’s Sexual Assault Treatment Center at Sinai Samaritan and West Allis Memorial hospitals for telling rape victims about Emergency Contraception.
Spearheaded by Pro-Life Wisconsin, Wisconsin Right to Life and The Wisconsin Catholic Conference, the campaign against Emergency Contraception is so strong that the Republican-controlled Assembly has refused to pass legislation that would require emergency rooms to notify rape victims of its availability, a policy recommended by the American Medical Association.
Perhaps most burdened by a limited access to birth control are teenagers.
For Dr. Geoffrey Swain, associate medical director for the Milwaukee Health Department, the issue is not just a matter of personal rights but how best to combat a public health crisis.
“Milwaukee has unacceptably high levels of teen pregnancies [18 percent, the second highest in the country], and we have high levels of infant mortality, especially among our infants of color,” says Swain. “And one of the key drivers of infant mortality is unplanned pregnancies.”
Rather than informing teens of ways to avoid pregnancy, federal dollars mostly go to abstinence-only programs, which frame contraception only in terms of failure rates. In Wisconsin, about 10-12 percent of the state’s school districts offer an abstinence-only curriculum, compared to about 1 percent a decade ago, says Jon Hisgen with the state Department of Public Instruction.
On a school-by-school basis, matters are murkier. The Milwaukee Public Schools policy is to offer comprehensive sex education. But in a memo this April, Milwaukee Commissioner of Health Bevan Baker expressed concern that the MPS curriculum is optional and not fully implemented in the majority of schools. “In a school system where 60 percent of the ninth- through 12th- graders have had sexual intercourse,” he wrote, “…the adequacy of education in these schools against sexual risk-taking behavior is a major concern.”
Political Terrain
On a policy level, the battle over birth control is being waged in state legislatures. In Wisconsin’s 2004-’05 session, at least 11 bills focused on abortion and birth control issues.
In mid-June, the state Assembly passed a bill – the first in the nation if approved – banning the University of Wisconsin System health centers from advertising, prescribing or dispensing Emergency Contraception to students. The Assembly sent the bill to the Senate, but Gov. Jim Doyle promised to veto it.
Rep. Dan LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) introduced the bill after a series of advertisements by University Health Services in Madison urged students to take Emergency Contraception with them on spring vacation as a precautionary measure.
LeMahieu, who has said birth control “encourages female promiscuity,” issued a press release denouncing the ads; the release said his legislation would prevent distribution of prescription birth control, “most notably the morning-after pill.” Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager wrote that the measure was drafted in a way that it could include all hormonal birth control.
Much of the debate centers on so-called “conscience clause” legislation, which would exempt medical personnel from liability and discipline if they refused to fulfill responsibilities they deem immoral. Under accepted medical practice, doctors, nurses and pharmacists generally may cite religious or moral concerns in refusing activities, but they are still obligated to ensure “continuity of care” so a patient’s health is not compromised.
By law, an employer is to accommodate an employee’s religious beliefs but only as long as it does not pose an undue burden, according to Judy Waxman of the National Women’s Law Center. The fear is that conscience-clause bills elevate the personal beliefs of a healthcare worker above other concerns, in essence trumping the patient’s health and employer’s rights.
There were two conscience-clause bills in Wisconsin’s most recent legislative session, one centering on pharmacists and birth control and the other a broader measure encompassing healthcare employees and providers and a wide variety of religious objections. No medical group supported either bill, according to lobbying activities recorded by the Wisconsin Ethics Board.
In June, Democrats introduced a counterproposal. Sponsored by Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee), the legislation would require pharmacists to fill any FDA-approved birth control medications prescribed by a doctor.
Yet the state Assembly’s shift to the right has kept advocates of abortion rights and birth control on the defensive. “Tommy Thompson would be a moderate to left-leaning Republican compared to today’s Legislature,” says Chris Taylor, political director for Planned Parenthood. She notes that conservatives are attempting to limit a two-year-old state program providing free reproductive healthcare to women aged 15 to 44, a program supported by Thompson when he was governor and approved on the federal level when he was secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
For now, Gov. Jim Doyle’s veto power stands as a defense of reproductive rights. In spring 2004, Doyle vetoed a conscience-clause bill and Republicans did not have enough votes to override. “One of the most sacred principles of our medical care system is that a doctor should always do what’s in the best interests of a patient’s health,” Doyle said in his veto message.
Whether Republicans have the votes to override bills that may pass this year is yet to be seen. One thing is certain: Bills that are defeated will come up again in future legislative sessions.
Wasserman believes his political counterparts are out of step with public opinion. “The vast majority of people want to use contraceptives, they want to use infertility treatments, they don’t want their end-of-life decisions overseen by politicians.”
Sande of Pro-Life Wisconsin says he understands that the general public may agree with Wasserman – at this point.
“We are a Christian organization and we are trying to spread the truth with a capital T,” he says with conviction. “Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. It is our charge to spread the truth on these issues. And every day, we have people coming over to our side.”
No Rx
For some doctors, birth control is bad medicine.
While much of the controversy over birth control has focused on pharmacists, there are a number of doctors in the Milwaukee area who oppose birth control.
Perhaps the most well known and respected is James Linn, chair of the ob/gyn department at Columbia St. Mary’s Milwaukee Campus. Linn exclusively advocates natural family planning and has not prescribed contraceptives since 1988.
“The simple but true answer is that I do not think contraception is good for people,” Linn wrote in response to written questions. “I care about my patients and of course will not prescribe something I think is bad for them. Fertility is not a disease to be treated with powerful drugs and devices.”
A 1980 graduate of the Medical College of Wisconsin, Linn has been involved with the Institute for Natural Family Planning established in 1997 at Marquette University. He was named one of the area’s top doctors in the July 2004 Milwaukee Magazine and is one of 10 area doctors listed on the Web site of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Linn shares an office at the Northpoint Medical Clinic with AAPLOG member and ob/gyn specialist Dr. Julie Mickelson. Both also have signed a widely promoted statement criticizing the Food and Drug Administration and arguing that Emergency Contraception is an abortifacient (a drug or device used to cause abortions).
In what must be an interesting office configuration, their Northpoint practice also includes ob/gyn doctor and state Rep. Sheldon Wasserman (D-Milwaukee), a vocal critic of the anti-birth control politics of Pro-Life Wisconsin.
While there are no signs at the Northpoint office that some of the doctors do not prescribe birth control, new patients are informed and directed to the appropriate doctors. “At least in my setting,” Wasserman says, “patients are routed in a way that their rights are respected and the doctor’s personal beliefs are respected.”
Accepted medical practice makes allowance for individual conscience, but not at the expense of the patient’s health or right to medical care. The American Medical Association underscores the right of physicians to excuse themselves from activities that violate their religious and moral beliefs but also emphasize the obligation to support “continuity of care,” including referrals, follow-ups and providing information.
Cynthia Jones-Nosacek, a family practice doctor at Northpoint refuses to prescribe birth control and will not make referrals to doctors who do. She does provide information to her patients “on the benefits and risks of all methods” and allows her staff to make referrals. (Jones-Nosacek prescribes Viagra for married men, arguing that “impotence is a disease,” while pregnancy is not.)
In explaining her views, Jones-Nosacek gives an analogy. “Let’s take abortion, something more clear cut,” she says. “If I say I don’t do abortions but I can send you to doctor so and so, at a moral level, it’s no different than me saying, ‘I won’t kill your mother but here’s the name of Vinnie the Snake and he will do it.’ ”
When it comes to birth control, such a position is rare. Dwight Cruikshank, chairman of the Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin ob/gyn department and a devout Christian, says: “What I do think would be not acceptable to me is if a physician feels he or she cannot provide contraception but yet refused to tell the patient where she could go to get such a thing,” he says. “That is going too far.”
The Activist
Who are Pro-Life Wisconsin and Wisconsin Right to Life.
On the surface, it’s hard to tell the difference between Wisconsin Right to Life and Pro-Life Wisconsin, the state’s two main anti-abortion groups. Both are headquartered in the Milwaukee area. Both oppose abortion and stem cell research and believe that living wills can be a slippery slope to euth-anasia. Both have legal disagreements with the right to privacy at the heart of U.S. Supreme Court decisions on birth control and abortion. Both believe life begins at conception and that a fertilized egg should have the same legal and moral rights as a living human being.
But there are important ideological differences between the two groups, particularly around birth control.
Matt Sande, legislative director for Pro-Life Wisconsin, believes unequivocally that “oral contraceptives can cause chemical abortion.” Indeed, opposition to birth control is a major focus of the group. On the anniversary of the June 7, 1965 U.S. Supreme Court decision that effectively granted the right to contraception, Pro-Life Wisconsin organizes prayer vigils “in remembrance of the hundreds of millions of Griswold v. Connecticut victims,” says the group.
Meanwhile, Barbara Lyons, executive director of Wisconsin Right to Life, notes that her group “has had a policy since its inception that we take no position on birth control.” She also argues that “there is no scientific evidence that tells us that hormonal birth control is an abortifacient [a drug causing abortion].”
There are two other important differences. Pro-Life Wisconsin promotes what it calls a “no exceptions” approach to condemning abortion, even when the mother’s life is in danger. Wisconsin Right to Life believes such an approach will never be found constitutional.
Wisconsin Right to Life is also formally nonsectarian, open to people of all faiths or no faith. Pro-Life Wisconsin is an explicitly Christian-based organization, with the majority of its board and staff Catholic.
How much these differences affect day-to-day work is not always clear. Chris Taylor, political director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, argues that the groups are separated more by style than substance.
“The biggest difference is that Right to Life is more savvy than Pro-Life,” says Taylor. “They don’t want people to believe they are hostile to birth control.… [But] as a lobbyist, I can tell you that I spend most of my time working against bills that restrict access to birth control.”
Wisconsin Right to Life is the larger, more polished and more established of the two groups. Based in Wauwatosa, it was founded in 1968 and is affiliated with the National Right to Life Committee. It has 54 chapters throughout the state and 55,000 dues-paying members, with numbers holding relatively steady. It employs 19 staffers and an additional 20 people in its for-profit subsidiary, the telemarketing service Life-Tell Inc.
Pro-Life Wisconsin is the upstart youngster – brasher, more aggressive and less willing to compromise. Headquartered in Brookfield, it was founded in 1992 by activists who believed “that the pro-life movement needed to refocus on principle to achieve total protection for all preborn children.”
It has 20 chapters statewide, 15,000 supporters and about 6,000 financial donors. There are five paid staffers. State Director Peggy Hamill says the group’s numbers “are growing very rapidly” and have doubled in the last five years.
Pro-Life Wisconsin is associated nationally with the American Life League, which claims 300,000 supporters. Other groups associated with the league include the increasingly influential Pharmacists for Life International, which has been supporting pharmacists refusing to dispense birth control. The league also directs the Crusade for the Defense of the Catholic Church, which has launched a nationwide campaign calling on bishops to prohibit the giving of communion to pro-choice politicians.
Barbara Miner profiled Vel Phillips in January.
