ProLifeWi: Bill to prohibit University of Wisconsin abortions being circulated

State Rep. Andre Jacque (R-DePere) and State Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) are currently circulating a bill that would prohibit both UW System and UW Hospital and Clinics Authority employees from performing or assisting in the performance of abortions while in the scope of their employment.

This bill, LRB-0916/2, would effectively end UW medical resident abortion training at the Madison Planned Parenthood abortion facility, a grisly arrangement that stains the reputation of Wisconsin’s public university system and flagship hospital.

In 2010, an open records request by Pro-Life Wisconsin and Alliance Defending Freedom revealed that since 2007, more than $58,000 of UW hospital authority funds had been used to train future abortionists at the Planned Parenthood in Madison.

The UW hospital authority paid physician medical residents in the UW School of Medicine and Public Health Ob/Gyn Department for two four-week rotations at Planned Parenthood, where they viewed and performed abortions with the oversight and assistance of department faculty.

In 2011, Gov. Scott Walker signed Act 32, the state biennial budget, which amended Wis. Stat. 20.927 to explicitly include the UW hospital authority as a “state agency” prohibited from funding abortions. In effect, this prohibited the UW hospital authority from continuing payments for medical residents performing abortions at the Madison Planned Parenthood.

However, the contractual agreement between the UW and Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin was renewed in a 2012 memorandum of understanding in which reimbursement for abortion services continued to flow from Planned Parenthood to UW.

continue at Pro Life WI

Alliance sues UW Hospital after denying care to developmentally disabled 13-year-old boy

Alliance Defending Freedom has filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the Wisconsin Supreme Court that supports a lawsuit against University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics after it denied treatment to two developmentally disabled patients even though they were not in a persistent vegetative state and were not terminally ill. One of the patients, a 13-year-old boy, died; the other, a 79-year-old woman, survived.

Without a court order and according to state law, a hospital can withhold treatment only if the patient has received a PVS diagnosis or has expressed a desire to refuse life-sustaining treatment prior to legal incompetency. Neither patient fit these qualifications.

“Having a disability shouldn’t be a death sentence,” said ADF Litigation Counsel Catherine Glenn Foster. “Neither patient was in an end-of-life situation. Allowing the hospital to get away with withholding treatment in this way endangers vulnerable patients and puts all patients’ lives – particularly those of patients with disabilities – at grave risk.”

A doctor with UW Hospitals and Clinics agreed to withhold treatment from a 13-year-old developmentally disabled boy given his “poor prognosis and poor quality of life” after only one meeting, no physical exam, no observation of his daily life, and no consultation with his long-term care team. UW physicians took him under their care, cut off his antibiotics for pneumonia, eliminated his nutrition and hydration, and sent him to hospice, where he died.

continue at LifeSite

UW Health doctor talks about 2008 push for second trimester abortions

Years before she plunged into her life's work, into the stormiest professional, moral, and emotional whirlpool of her life – Nancy Fredericks was busy learning how not to swim.

Her parents kept taking their little girl for lessons at the community pool in her native Ellsworth, Wisconsin, and Nancy kept looking at the water up to everybody's neck and finding reasons to slip away to the root beer stand. Finally, after countless floats and three failing efforts to pass the beginners course, some deep-down tide turned, and Nancy fell in love with the water.

She spent her summers at the pool, mastering the back and breaststroke, water safety classes, and, in time, the life-saving training program. She worked three happy summers as a local lifeguard.

"No one ever suggested I couldn't do this job because of my size," she says (Nancy is 5' 3"), "and I never doubted that I could."

That confidence would come in handy, in years to come. By then, Nancy had traded her whistle and swimsuit for a stethoscope and scrubs. But to her mind, she was still guarding lives.

And still drawing on some of the lessons she learned in the deep end of the pool.

The road from Ellsworth to Madison wasn't long, and once Nancy traveled it, she rarely looked back. Madison was home to the University of Wisconsin (UW), and on those hallowed grounds she completed her degrees, met her husband-to-be, and, ultimately, found her professional home.

After years of work at hospitals throughout the community, she settled in contentedly seven years ago as one of four full-time anesthesiologists at the Madison Surgery Center (MSC), an outpatient clinic run by a coalition of local medical juggernauts: UW Hospital and Clinics, the UW Medical Foundation, and Meriter Hospital (a private facility near the UW Campus).

Somehow, she still manages to squeeze in time to teach as an assistant clinical professor at the nearby UW medical school. She expresses enormous respect and affection for all those she works with, and great pride in what they accomplish, day by day, in their small corner of the medical world.

"We all work really hard," she says. "We help each other. Everybody is a team player."

The team was just getting a new game plan when Nancy returned from vacation in late autumn 2008. She was called into a meeting with other anesthesiologists and the clinic's medical director, who announced that MSC would soon begin providing late second-trimester abortions.

continue at Alliance Defending Freedom

This week Matt Bowman appeared on Relevant Radio with Shiela Liaugminas to discuss U. of Wisconsin’s illegal funding of abortion. | MP3 audio 17:38 mins

UW-Madison confirms ongoing use of aborted baby parts in research

From Pro-Life Wisconsin:

In mid-July, I wrote about UW-Madison opposing potential legislation that would ban the use of aborted fetal parts in research projects in the state.

That legislation was introduced last week Tuesday, authored by Rep. Andre Jacque. Read the bill here.

The legislation bans persons from knowingly and for valuable consideration acquiring, receiving, or transferring a fetal body part. It also bans persons from knowingly providing, receiving, or using for experimentation a fetal body part. Fetal body part is defined to mean a cell, tissue, organ, or other part of an unborn child who is aborted by an induced abortion.

University of Wisconsin (UW) officials are already attacking the bill, claiming that it will have a “chilling effect” on the biomedical research UW Madison is currently conducting using aborted fetal tissue. Click here for a Capital Times article detailing the UW’s opposition to AB 214 and Rep. Jacque’s and PLW’s response.

Click here [PDF] for PLW's legislative memo detailing the UW’s grisly research on human fetal body parts.

Federal law prohibits the interstate trafficking of human fetal body parts. Wisconsin’s intrastate commercial activity must have a similar prohibition so that we can guarantee the highest ethical standards of academic research and medical care in our state. Pro-Life Wisconsin thanks Representative Jacque for introducing AB 214 and defending the human dignity of our aborted brothers and sisters.

Why would UW-Madison oppose such a law? Shouldn't the state's flagship university be concerned with the education of students (not to mention human beings that will never experience college, due to being aborted)?

There is documented evidence of UW conducting research on human fetal brain and pancreatic tissue, most recently a 2000 fetal brain cell study conducted by Su-Chun Zhang of the UW-Madison Department of Medical Sciences used immature neural cells from fetal human brain tissue of 15-20 gestation weeks “after elective termination of intrauterine pregnancies” to study neurological disorders including multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. The study acknowledged Dr. Dennis Christenson, a former Madison abortionist, for his “assistance in this project.”

And now we know UW is currently using aborted baby parts in research. UW's vaunted research facilities have turned into a Communist-style house of horrors. You know who else performs research on human beings? Cuba, Russia [during the WWI era] , China, Germany [during Hitler's regime], Korea...

Pro-Life Wisconsin requests Attorney General to enforce law against UW Hospital funding of abortion training

From Pro-Life Wisconsin:

On behalf of Pro-Life Wisconsin, the Alliance Defense Fund filed a formal request on Tuesday, July 5, with the Wisconsin Attorney General’s office to confirm the illegality of and enforce the law against the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics (UWHC) Authority’s payment of physician-residents for abortion training at Planned Parenthood in Madison. The recently-signed state budget specifically applies current law restrictions on abortion funding to the UWHC Authority.

Our University of Wisconsin public entities should not be ground zero for training abortionists. Residents need to be instructed how to save, preserve and respect life, not how to kill preborn children at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, the state's number-one abortion provider.

To view the letter to the Attorney General, click here.

Medical residents in the UW School of Medicine Ob/Gyn Department have two four-week rotations at Planned Parenthood, where they view and participate in abortions. To view the rotation schedule, click here. To view the signed contract between UW and Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, click here.

Wisconsin law is crystal clear: No state agency can fund abortions. The UWHC Authority is a state agency, and it is not above the law. We look forward to Attorney General Van Hollen’s confirmation and enforcement of this critical law so that the UWHC does not stubbornly persist in their illegal and offensive abortion funding.

Laurel Rice, chair of the UWHC Authority's ob/gyn department, performs abortions at Planned Parenthood in Madison.

Background regarding UW Hospital and its ties to Planned Parenthood:

- In March 2010, an open records request done by Pro-Life Wisconsin and the Alliance Defense Fund revealed that UW Hospital was sending ob/gyn medical school residents to PPWI for abortion training.

- In April 2010, PLW and ADF filed a request for a legal opinion with the state of Wisconsin Attorney General’s office on whether it was legal for state taxpayer funds to be used to train future abortionists.

- In June 2010, the Attorney General’s office concurred that UW was violating state law and sent the matter on for a state funding audit.

- When the budget was being voted on, a budget provision was inserted defining UW Hospital as a state agency, effectively ending UW Hospital’s ability to send its residents over to PPWI.