Politics & Government
Rep. Pasch Voices Support for Legal Challenge to Law Regulating 'Pill Abortions'
Planned Parenthood filed suit Wednesday alleging the recently enacted state law — which subjects doctors who perform "pill abortions" to the risk of criminal penalties — doesn't clearly define procedures to satisfy the measure.
State Rep. Sandy Pasch is standing alongside Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin as the non-profit reproductive healthcare provider has filed a legal challenge to the state law that imposes possible criminal penalties against doctors who perform medication-induced abortions.
requires patients and doctors take a series of steps and physicians establish that women aren't coerced into abortion, before receiving or administering a so-called "pill abortion."
Planned Parenthood filed suit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Madison and lists Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen and the Medical Examining Board as defendants, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
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The legal challenge claims the law does not clearly define proper procedures to satisfy all of the requirements of the law, the newspaper said.
The method of a medication-induced abortion accounts for about a quarter of the organization's abortions in Wisconsin, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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Pasch, a Democratic lawmaker representing Shorewood and portions of Milwaukee, said the law infringes on the private relationship between patient and physician and "poses significant criminal risk for providers, and forces women to go through more dangerous and invasive surgical procedures."
“Act 217 created an unprecedented interference within the private patient-physician relationship and places an extreme burden on women and healthcare providers across our state," Pasch said in a prepared statement Thursday. "This legislation — which was driven by extreme special interests — trumps evidence-based health practices with intrusive political motivations by sticking legislators directly into our medical examining rooms."
Pasch continued, “People are sick and tired of partisan politics trumping the health of our families and communities. For the sake of our state’s women and medical professionals, I am hopeful that this suit will restore the use of safe women’s health services and secure a woman’s ability to make her own personal, complex medical decisions.”
The law doesn't affect surgically performed abortions or emergency contraception medication like the "morning-after" pill.
The state ceased funding Planned Parenthood for breast and cervical cancer screenings, contraception and testing and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases earlier this year, according to the Journal Sentinel..
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