EDITORIAL – Legislature wants to deny UW students EC

The Wisconsin state legislature just got served.

Several legislators there drafted a bill in… The Wisconsin state legislature just got served.

Several legislators there drafted a bill in response to ads taken out by the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s University Health Service in The Daily Cardinal and The Badger-Herald, UWM’s student newspapers.

These ads advised women who were going on spring break to purchase emergency contraception before they went so that, were their primary forms of contraception to fail, they’d have a back-up method on hand, since many spring break spots might not have the best pharmaceutical services.

In response to this perfectly reasonable advice, lawmakers wrote a bill that would ban the UW system from advertising, prescribing or dispensing EC, better known as the morning-after pill.

Before we delve into exactly how and when the legislature’s serving took place, it should be noted that UWM’s University Health Service works much like Pitt does — it’s funded by student health fees, not directly by taxpayers.

Also, the bill’s developer, Rep. Dan LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, said that the university had overstepped its bounds in providing EC and had strayed from its charge of educating people. (Though strangely, other medication is somehow educational?) By that logic, no university should provide a health service at all. Or housing. Or athletics programs. Or …

The point is that this is another attempt to stop perfectly legal adults from having perfectly legal sex safely. EC is no one’s idea of a birth control — it’s emergency contraception and not an entirely pleasant experience to take.

In fact, it’s pretty much a walloping dose of hormones, taken in order to prevent implantation of a fertilized egg. Side effects include nausea, vomiting and headaches — hardly anything that someone on spring break wants to go through.

The serving that went on, then, was the result of Democratic legislators asking the state attorney general to take a look at the bill. After reviewing it, the attorney general said that the bill, if passed, would be patently unconstitutional because it was unclear, constituted an invasion of privacy, discriminated against women and infringed on the university system’s freedom of speech. In other words, shut the hell up, Wisconsin legislature.

Thanks to her comments, a bill that could have slipped through didn’t, and UW students still have access to the prescriptions to which they are legally entitled.

Sadly, the legislature’s actions are indicative of a larger attitude that seeks to deprive consenting adults of their rights. Students have the right to EC. It’s legal, and student health services usually provide it for much less than do general practitioners or other services.

Taking away women’s ability to get a hold of EC won’t lead to less sex. It’ll just lead to more abortions or more kids — and what kind of family will kids conceived in a drunken hook-up in Cancun really get?

Pitt, although less into aggressive advertising, also offers EC, and were our lovely state legislators to question its ability to do so, we hope the University would tell them exactly where and how to shut the hell up.