Posts on Wisconsin

Who would freak out about an elementary school's traditional "Wacky Week"? The good folks at VCY America, that's who: "Students at Pineview Elementary in Reedsburg [WI] had been dressing in costume all last week as part of an annual school tradition called Wacky Week. On Friday, students were encouraged to dress either as senior citizens or as members of the opposite sex. A local resident informed the Voice of Christian Youth America on Friday. The Milwaukee-based radio network responded by interrupting its morning programming for a special broadcast that aired on nine radio stations throughout Wisconsin. The broadcast criticized the dress-up day and accused the district of promoting alternative lifestyles."

Efforts to expand the emerging, nebulous concept of anti-abortion health-care providers’ “right of conscience” were dealt a setback this week, as a Wisconsin appeals court upheld the state Pharmacy Examining Board’s rebuke of Neil Noesen. Noesen, a “traveling pharmacist,” was working temporarily at a Menomonie Kmart when he refused to fill a woman’s prescription for birth control pills—and refused to transfer her prescription elsewhere.

Noesen, 34, of St. Paul, Minn., told regulators that he is a devout Roman Catholic and refused to refill the prescription or release it to another pharmacy because he didn't want to commit a sin by "impairing the fertility of a human being."

The Pharmacy Examining Board ruled in 2005 that Noesen failed to carry out his professional responsibility to get the woman's prescription to someone else if he wouldn't fill it himself.

The board reprimanded Noesen and ordered him to attend ethics classes. He was allowed to keep his license as long as he informs all future employers in writing that he won't dispense birth control pills and outlines steps he will take to make sure a patient has access to medication.

Noesen, whose “conscience” about the woman’s “fertility” told him he had to keep the prescription slip away from her, is an extreme case, but the line between respecting the religious observance of health providers and maintaining individuals’ access to health care is being disputed in a variety of cases. Last year we wrote about a “conscience” case where doctors refused to provide artificial insemination to a lesbian. But for the most part, the movement is focused on birth control and abortion.

Last week, a federal court dismissed a lawsuit by the state of California challenging the Weldon Amendment, which denies funds to states that “discriminate” against health services that do not refer patients for abortions, and which Casey Mattox of the Christian Legal Society described as “a critical protection for the rights of conscience of pro-life healthcare workers.”

And the Bush Administration is wading in to the debate: Michael Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services, is leaning on the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology to rescind a report he claimed “would force physicians to violate their conscience by referring patients for abortions or taking other objectionable actions.”

After a month—and 14 press releases—the Catholic League today announced the end of its mini-boycott against Miller Brewing Company.

Former Sen. Fred Thompson, who is reportedly going to announce his candidacy for president soon, recently offered his video greetings to the annual convention of the National Right to Life Committee, an organization that endorsed him when he ran for Senate in 1994. While Thompson has so far been favorably received by the Religious Right– with the possible exception of James Dobson – the recent Supreme Court decision regarding the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act is a reminder that groups like NRLC may have second thoughts about him.

The case, FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, limited parts of the campaign-finance law that regulated “issue ads” implicating a candidate for office. While anti-abortion activists were not the only critics of the law to appreciate the decision, the case had a particular relevance for them with an NRLC state affiliate’s name on the docket. And such activists have also made campaign finance into a campaign issue for presidential candidate John McCain, the co-author of the bill – despite McCain’s fervent opposition to abortion.

When it comes to Thompson, these activists might remember his role as sherpa for John Roberts during his contentious confirmation to be chief justice of the Court, and Roberts was the author of the Wisconsin Right to Life decision. But, as National Journal reporter Marc Ambinder reminds us, Thompson was also a major backer of campaign reform during his time in the Senate, when he chaired the committee investigating campaign finance – and he picked a nasty fight with a handful of advocacy groups, including the same National Right to Life Committee.

In 1997, Thompson used a Senate government affairs committee hearing to probe the electioneering of National Right to Life and other groups, and his subpoena request for internal NRTL documents was strongly resisted by counsel -- including James Bopp, Jr., who now advises Mitt Romney.

In addition, Thompson wrote a friend-of-the-court brief in 2003 in support of the law’s overturned provisions:

Thompson wrote that "sham issue advocacy by non-party groups" was a "problem" that BCRA "addresses." Congress, Thompson wrote, "had a compelling interest in enacting the BCRA reforms. The rapidly increasing practices of raising and spending soft money (with a significant focus on sham ‘issue ads’ that unquestionably influence federal elections) fully justify the BCRA reforms.”

Thompson and McCain were the only two Republican senators “firmly committed” to campaign reform, as the New York Times reported in 1997, and that advocacy has apparently cost McCain much support from a part of the right-wing base that would seemingly take to him. Will Thompson’s campaign reform past come back to haunt him?

Pro-Life Wisconsin.

Sen. John McCain “is far and away the most consistently anti-abortion of all the top contenders” for the Republican presidential ticket, according to Charlotte Allen in The

Weekly Standard, yet many anti-abortion advocates won’t have any truck with him. “The aversion to McCain is often visceral,” wrote Fred Barnes recently in the same magazine, citing James Dobson’s promise never to support McCain. Allen reports that McCain’s far-right position on abortion has, for some anti-abortion activists, taken a back seat to his legislation on campaign finance:

McCain has a major problem with the nation's largest and most influential anti-abortion advocacy organization, the National Right to Life Committee. And the source of that problem is . . . not abortion at all. It's the McCain-Feingold Act, that set of restrictions on political advertising during election seasons that McCain (along with a number of Democrats) started pushing in 1995 and succeeded in enacting into federal law in 2002.

The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) regards McCain-Feingold as a major hindrance to its mission of pro-life advocacy--and, pari passu, McCain himself as something close to a personal enemy. A so-far-successful constitutional challenge to a key portion of McCain-Feingold mounted by an NRLC affiliate, Wisconsin Right to Life, is pending in the Supreme Court, with oral argument set for Wednesday, April 25.

Wisconsin: Feds “made it very clear to the states they wanted abstinence-only education.”

In lawsuit.

Roy Moore employs “slippery slope” argument. Also: Wisconsin pastor claims vote against marriage ban a “sin against God.”

Supporters of referendum, which also bans civil unions, cite the recent New Jersey decision. Watch their new ad, courtesy of right-wing funders. Focus on the Family is concerned about Arizona and Colorado as well.

For 43 states.

So-called “family policy councils.” More here.

FRC cites “desperate need”; Idaho, Wisconsin and Colorado groups cite NJ decision; South Dakota group mobilizes churches.

Hazleton-like ordinance in Arcadia would have targeted landlords, regulated flag-flying.

To amend state constitution to ban same-sex marriage; the campaign is targeting minorities. Also: FRC claims 5,000 pastors in similar effort in Wisconsin.