Amanda, Rape Survivor

Testimony Submitted to Senate Committee on Health

I am here to offer my support for SB 398, which repeals Wisconsin State Statute 940.04, our state’s archaic ban all abortion procedures. I am grateful to Representative Berceau for once again introducing this important legislation and to you, Senator Erpenbach, for scheduling a hearing on this bill. I appreciate the political courage both of you demonstrate by acting to remove language from our law books that allows the state to force me and other women to carry all our future pregnancies to term, ultimately impinging on what I believe to be the most personal and private relationships on this earth—that between an individual and his or her body.

Although I speak before you as one of the thousands of women in this state who will be directly impacted by statute 940.04 if Roe v. Wade is overturned any time soon, I don’t believe that our debate today should necessarily be about a woman’s right to reproductive autonomy. After all, repealing 940.04 will not broaden access to abortion; the numerous restrictions that the federal and state government imposes on women’s reproductive decisions will remain intact when 940.04 is repealed. What changes when this law is repealed is that the abortion issue in Wisconsin is no longer hampered by a patently offensive, anachronistic blanket prohibition that in all practicality is unenforceable. After all, what exactly happens when Roe v. Wade is overturned and the state has the burden of enforcing this law? How do you imagine it? What precisely will the state of Wisconsin do to ensure that every woman who becomes pregnant stays pregnant until she produces a baby? Will Wisconsin ensure full coverage for pre- and post- natal care to its women? Or will you put those of us who are considered “at risk” for abortion behind bars until we give birth in shackles?

Wisconsin’s criminal abortion statute was written at a time when these questions were not only irrelevant, but would never have been considered. In the late 1800s, women were routinely institutionalized as treatment for “female hysteria,” which illustrates my fundamental opposition to keeping 940.04 on the books: It is old. It is hurtful. It is a reminder of the painful historical fact that for many years women were considered chattel in the eyes of the law, not as individuals worthy of the same autonomy as men. After all, this law was written at a time when women didn’t have rights to property, when women could not make legal contracts without the consent of their fathers or husbands and when just a few hundred miles south, millions of women were bound not only by law, but by the physical chain of slavery. This law was written at a time when real women, not unlike the fictional Hester Prynne, were responsible for bearing the full brunt of sexual impropriety. Truly, this law needs to be repealed because it is born out of the same misogynistic mindset as the customs I’ve just outlined, customs that extend from the great historical embarrassment called witch-hunts. In fact, in its historical context this law is a doubly insulting witch-hunt itself, since it not only criminalizes women as patients, but also women serving as midwives and health care practitioners at a time when modern obstetrics and gynecology had not yet entered into frontier medicine.

As I hope I've made clear, this law dates from a time that has very little to do with the social, cultural and political realities we face today. If it did, I wouldn’t be here—my very presence before this legal body would not have been permissible in 1849. Senators Roessler, Vinehout and Lazich: You wouldn't be here either. At least, you wouldn't be here if countless other antiquated laws dismissive of women’s rights had not been removed from our law books. I think it goes without saying that Wisconsin owes many debts not only to the countless women disenfranchised in its history, but also to its women residents today who are courageous enough to cross hostile lines of self-righteous protestors standing between them and the mere four abortion clinics in this state. In a quiet act of defiance, these women transgress a vocal minority's successful yet unjust work to perpetuate a social order that suppresses the limitless talents and contributions we women make when given many choices.

So today, you have a choice: You can choose to endorse an offensive, anachronistic, unenforceable law remnant of a deeply dark period in American history for women. Or, you can pass SB 398, choosing instead to follow the Wisconsin traditions that make me so proud to be a woman in this state: We were the first state to ratify the 19th Amendment in 1919; we ratified the Equal Rights Amendment in 1972; last Spring, this very committee passed the Compassionate Care for Rape Victims Act, giving it the momentum it needed to pass both houses of the legislature. Repealing 940.04 follows in this tradition. And this, I believe, is a tradition we all can be proud of.