"Catholic" governor Doyle pushes children's birth control program

Tom Barrett, Cecile Richards, and Jim Doyle

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) is applying to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to make Wisconsin’s Medicaid Family Planning Waiver Program permanent. The program, applied for periodically, currently provides free, taxpayer-funded birth control to Wisconsin teen boys and girls as young as 15 years old without their parents’ knowledge or consent. Federal and state law prohibits parents from being notified that their minor sons and daughters are receiving free contraceptives under this program.

DHS also wants to provide birth control drugs and devices provided under this program to men and women who make as much as $32,940 (three times the federal poverty line), up from the current annual income limit of $21,660. Importantly, family income is disregarded as an eligibility factor for women under 19 who are not married and have no children. Therefore almost every teen girl in the state is financially eligible. 

Pro-Life Wisconsin (PLW) has worked the last several legislative sessions to block minor girls and boys’ access to the program by raising the minimum eligibility age from 15 to 18.  These efforts were unsuccessful under the pro-abortion Doyle administration and Democrat-controlled legislature, but we hope that under a pro-life Scott Walker administration and  Republican legislature, we can achieve this critical goal. 

This morning’s cover story in the Wisconsin State Journal quotes PLW’s legislative director, Matt Sande, on our opposition to this immoral, dangerous and wasteful program. For the full story, click here.

ProLife Wisconsin

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