April 12, 2005
Rep. Daniel LeMahieu
Room 17 North, State Capitol
P.O. Box 8952
Madison, WI 53708
Dear Representative LeMahieu:
I am writing you because I am convinced that your intention to prohibit University Health Services from distributing emergency contraception to students amounts to an egregious and excessive act of government intrusion. Not only does the act demonstrate contempt for the principle of privacy, but it would undermine the collective health of UW's 22,000 female students.
The preface to this legislation was your reaction to UHS advertisements that ran in the student newspapers. The ads suggested students get advance emergency contraceptive prescriptions before leaving town for spring break. The ads were received innocuously on campus, but that was far from the case in your office. Courting controversy, you proclaimed, \I am outraged that our public institutions are giving younger women the tools for having promiscuous sexual relations, whether on campus or a thousand miles away on spring break."" In other words, you are arguing that by providing students with the morning after pill, the university is giving license to ""promiscuous"" behavior on the night before.
This argument is well acquainted with antiquity. The notion that greater access to birth control results in an increase in the amount of youngsters acting 'promiscuously' was around before ""On Wisconsin!"" was UW's official fight song in 1909.
You said, ""sometimes to get somebody's attention, you hit him over the head with a 2x4 ... here comes the 2x4."" I may not have a 2x4, but I do have the last 25 years of medical science research, and maybe that will do. Just four months ago, a study conducted by researchers at the University of California-San Francisco of 2,117 San Francisco-area women ages 15 to 24 found that ""15- to 24-year-old females who had unfettered access to emergency contraception didn't engage in unprotected sex any more than those who didn't have it."" The most comprehensive study on the morning after pill was published in 1999 in the British Medical Journal. The study monitored the sexual activity of 52,000 teenagers in Europe, where the morning after pill has been available for almost two decades. The study concluded that the ""teenagers who had easy access to emergency contraceptives do not indulge in more sex than those who did not.""
Not only does distributing the pill not lead to increased promiscuity, but it reduces the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions. According to the medical journal of the American Academy of Family Physicians, it is ""estimated that 51,000 abortions were prevented by emergency contraception in the year 2000."" It is further estimated that use of emergency contraception could reduce unintended pregnancies by one half, potentially resulting in 700,000 fewer abortions. In light of the facts, your legislation just seems like it is from another geological era. It is more reflective of our state fossil, the Trilobite, than it is our state motto - Forward.
I would also like to dispel some of the perhaps preconceived notions of student life that might have spurred this new legislation. Madison is not a hearth of hedonism. Here at UW, contrary to what outsiders might think, the majority of students are not so enamored with sex and alcohol that we require the state government to help us make decisions about our personal lives. We are functional adults, and many of us function at a high level. The idea that female students can have the wherewithal to earn an 'A' in a class called ""Radiological Physics and Dosimetry,"" yet be unable to make decisions about their sex life without the help of a 58-year-old male state legislator, is repugnant to reason. Rep. LeMahieu, the next time you decide to bring the state of Wisconsin into the bedrooms of its citizens, please at least remember to knock first.
It's not that I do not appreciate your efforts to better the lives of Wisconsin's college students, but this is not the way to do it. Maybe instead of monitoring our sex lives you and your colleagues in the capitol could take a stand against higher tuition. Pretty soon it will be cheaper to go to school on Mars than in Wisconsin. The 42,000 students and I at UW-Madison would think you were watching out for us if you looked into lowering tuition instead of looking into our bedrooms.
Sincerely,
Jacob Herrera
