The great political wrangling of 2010 has drawn to a close, and the results are in: Wisconsin bit the big one. The state voted out its beloved progressive Sen. Russ Feingold in favor of some rich dude from Oshkosh. You know, the one without a platform. We voted in Scott Walker as Governor, the über-conservative Milwaukee county executive with a faux-folksy brown bag campaign and his cross-hairs set on rolling back Wisconsin's progressive heritage when it comes to comprehensive sex education and LGBT and reproductive rights.
Then there's our new Lieutenant Governor, Rebecca Kleefisch who thinks same-sex marriage is the same as marrying a clock. I'll admit to having a not-so-secret love affair with the snooze button, but give me a break. Not to mention the complete turn over of both houses of the state legislature to Republicans, meaning there will be nothing to stop these anti-choice, anti-LGBT, anti-everything people from running roughshod over progress made in the past few years.
What does this have to do with sex? Well here you go: Say good-bye to the Family Planning Waiver. Pro-Life Wisconsin, the state-wide anti-choice organization has been gunning to have funding for the Family Planning Waiver cut, essentially blocking money used to fund birth control and other sexual health services for low-income men and women (including many college students). Walker and his ilk will likely throw this program under the bus. If you don't have health insurance or don't want to go over to Planned Parenthood (or Planned Parenthood runs out of funds because they'll be flooded), you'll be out of luck.
Even if you have health insurance and are able to afford contraception and birth control pills, you will have to make sure you're getting it from the right place. According to an article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Walker sponsored a bill during his tenure in the legislature backing pharmacists who refused to dispense birth control pills, RU-486 (the ""abortion pill,"" to be taken under physician supervision in a clinic), and Plan-B, the morning after pill. Under Walker's 2001 plan, a pharmacist would be allowed to deny anyone open access to birth control based on religious or moral grounds. Now that Walker controls the executive branch and Republicans hold a majority in the legislature, what's to stop them from passing something similarly draconian?
And how about abortions? The stated goal of the Democratic party has long been ""Safe. Legal. Rare."" But not in Walker's world. Walker's campaign touted itself as being ""100 percent Pro-Life,""—even when it comes to rape and incest. That means any woman, regardless of circumstance, would in Walker's utopia, be denied a safe, legal abortion. Who knows what field day the courts would have with an abortion ban in Wisconsin, but it would seem plausible that under Walker's watch, we may just become a testing ground for a challenge to abortion rights in the United States.
There is very little stopping the conservative right from taking away many of our reproductive rights as citizens, so here's what you need to know if you're going to have sex in Walker's Wisconsin and you don't want to get pregnant.
1) Get insurance. You probably can't rely on getting free contraception unless you go to Planned Parenthood. But who knows, maybe they'll find a way to make that illegal too. On top of all that, make sure you have a backup pharmacy for when your pharmacist decides they've discovered their latent Catholicism and suddenly can't be bothered to throw a pack of pills in your bag.
2) Wear a condom. Luckily for you, our campus runneth over with prophylactics. Sex Out Loud has them. The Campus Women's Center and LGBT Campus Center has them. UHS has them, and so does Planned Parenthood. The point is, wrap it up. Not only will you be protecting yourself and your partners from potentially contracting or passing STI's back and forth, but you'll also help avoid that sexually-transmitted uterine parasite called a fetus.
3) Stock up on Plan B. That's right. Stock up. It has a long shelf life. About 24 months. Anyone can get it as long as you're over 17 (another thing you can expect Walker and his cronies to do in) and you can demand it over the counter. If it's too expensive, go see a doctor in UHS and get a prescription. Often it's covered under insurance pharmaceutical plans and is cheaper if you have a prescription.
Hopefully Walker won't get his hands on Plan B until well into his governorship and your Plan B stash will tide you over until someone rational lifts any bans he may put in place. By that time, Wisconsin will surely have gone sufficiently to shit such that he won't be back for another four years.
But seriously folks, we're fucked. Now is not the time to sit back and wail, but rather to organize, agitate, and act up. Stand up for what you believe. Do you believe women should have the right to choose? act up. Do you believe in easy, affordable, or free access to contraception? Act up. Make your voice heard. Just because a bunch of backward bumpkins were able to drag themselves to the polls in their buggies on Tuesday doesn't mean we have to take what's coming lying down. Then again, maybe all we need is for something to get taken away before anyone gives a damn.
E-mail any questions or comments to sex@dailycardinal.com.
