The Assembly passed a joint resolution that would proclaim tomorrow, the 47th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, to be “Protect Life Day.”
But many Dems dismissed the resolution as “political game-playing.”
“This is what’s going on across this country in the hopes of building a case strong enough to overturn Roe v. Wade,” said Rep. Christine Sinicki, D-Milwaukee. “Mr. Speaker, I don’t think any one of us want to go back to that time of horror where women were sometimes forced to perform their own abortions, forced to go to unqualified doctors to perform an abortion.”
But Rep. Barbara Dittrich, R-Oconomowoc, fired back that the Supreme Court’s decision happened at a time without the “high tech ultrasounds that we have now where you can see babies with such clarity in the womb.”
She said she “can’t wait” to vote for the resolution, calling the protection of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness “one of the most basic things we celebrate here in America.”
Rep. Staush Gruszynski, D-Green Bay, said his family discussed abortion when his wife underwent medical complications at 22 weeks pregnant.
“When you feel the weight of the world in the decision-making process… the world is big enough and the room is small enough without 98 other members of this body in the room there with you,” Gruszynski said.
But the bill’s author Rep. Janel Brandtjen said the resolution’s “only purpose” was to celebrate life and start “a larger conversation about how great kids really are.”
The Menomonee Falls Republican said “Wisconsin would not survive” without the next generation of children.
AJR 118 passed 63-35 along party lines.
The Senate tried to add the resolution to its calendar, a move that required a two-thirds vote. It failed 18-13.
See more:
https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2019/related/proposals/ajr118
