Pro-Life Organization Calls Wisconsin Hospitals to Stop Funding Abortion

AP Images/Stephen Jones

Pro-Life Wisconsin is fighting to get lawmakers to uphold a state
law which makes it illegal for the University of Wisconsin Hospital
and Clinics Authority to pay physicians for performing abortions at a
Planned Parenthood facility.

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys sent a letter Tuesday on the organization’s
behalf to Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, asking that he
uphold the law. After making a vow in December to end its
state-funded late-term abortion program, UWHCA is now wanting to
continue its funding of abortions through training.

“State agency medical facilities should only be training and
paying residents to protect and preserve preborn children—not
destroy them,” ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman says. “State law
makes it illegal for state entities, including the University of
Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics Authority, to fund the killing of
preborn children through training or other programs. We are confident
that Attorney General Van Hollen will acknowledge that UWHCA is not
above the law.”

Wis. Stat. 20.927 was amended by 2011
Wisconsin Act 32 in June, which makes it illegal for the UWHCA
to continue its payments to physician-residents to perform abortions
at Planned Parenthood Wisconsin or any other facility.

“The UWHCA must not be allowed to ignore its legal obligations
by pursuing or continuing any scheme in which it seeks to fund the
performance of abortions,” the ADF letter to the attorney general
states. “The State of Wisconsin has decided that neither ‘funds
of the state’ nor ‘funds of state agencies,’ including funds of
UWHCA, should pay for abortions.”

The ADF discovered in January 2009, UWHCA’s heinous plans to
create a full-service practice for the aborting of 19-22-week-old
preborn children. This practice would have likely involved medical
residents’ participation in the killing of second-trimester babies.
Before that, the second-trimester abortions occurred at Planned
Parenthood.

ADF attorneys sent a letter that year urging UWHCA to cease its
plans for the late-term abortion program, which UWHCA subsequently
confirmed it would end at the Madison Surgery Center last December.