Rep. Chris Taylor: Rebecca Bradley’s Contraception Misconception

From my email inbox comes a great op-ed by Democratic State Rep. Chris Taylor addressing Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley’s alarming positions on reproductive health care for women.

Justice Rebecca Bradley’s consistent and alarming positions on reproductive health care should concern anyone who believes that women have constitutional rights to make child bearing decisions, because she has made it remarkably clear that she does not. This is especially relevant because over the last five years, Governor Walker and Republicans in the legislature have launched an unprecedented attack on access to reproductive health care, causing litigation in Wisconsin over hospital admitting privileges and medication abortion that shows no signs of easing. The only relief from the myriad of abortion restrictions and limits on birth control are our courts.

Her early columns reveal her opinions on the topic of reproductive health care, which are consistent with more recent views that she has refused to disavow. In addition to comparing abortion to the holocaust, she has equated birth control with murder. In a 1992 column entitled “Right should extend into the womb,” she ridicules the right of women to control their own bodies and advances a personhood argument – that a fertilized egg should be afforded the rights and privileges of an actual person. Personhood constitutional amendments have been pushed by anti-choice crowds in other states and in Wisconsin. These efforts, including in North Dakota and Mississippi, have gone down in flames once voters realize that the effect of recognizing a fertilized egg as a person effectively outlaws most forms of hormonal birth control, including birth control pills.

In a 2006 column, Justice Bradley argues that “contraceptives may cause the death of a conceived, unborn child” and that pharmacists should be able to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions if they object “to being a party to murder.” As egregious, Justice Bradley erroneously claims that these statements are “scientifically supported.” She makes a similar claim in her 1992 column by saying that personhood is an idea “widely established by the scientific community.” Yet these incorrect medical statements aren’t from the scientific community, but from right-wing extremist groups who oppose birth control and abortion.

Let me be clear: The medical consensus is that birth control does not cause an abortion. In fact, contraception is defined by a number of experts, including Physicians for Reproductive Health, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and The American Medical Women’s Association as a method that “prevents a pregnancy from taking place.”

Justice Bradley has shown she is not fit to sit on the state’s highest court and cannot be trusted with these most private, fundamental rights – rights that are protected by the United States Constitution. Will a justice who truly believes that abortion is tantamount to the holocaust protect a woman’s right to have an abortion? Will a justice who believes that birth control is tantamount to murder protect a woman’s ability to access birth control?

These rights are too important, and too precious, to put in the hands of a justice who seems more wedded to extreme views than to truly protecting our most precious constitutional rights. Justice Rebecca Bradley needs to resign from the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

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3 thoughts on “Rep. Chris Taylor: Rebecca Bradley’s Contraception Misconception

  1. Zach, thanks.

    Per her campaign site, Justice Rebecca Bradley proudly announces that she is on the, Board of Governors of the Thomas More Society.

    https://www.justicerebeccabradley.com/about/

    The Thomas More Society is reserved for the most extreme wing nuts. They claim to be in favor of “liberty,” but they’re against birth control, want government forcing birth, and are against gay marriage.

    Rep. Taylor’s call for her resignation is well founded.

    The Thomas More Society does not defend adultery. They approve of the state law Wisconsin has that makes adultery a crime. Justice Rebecca Bradley confessed to serial adultery over a long period of time in an affidavit.

    “‘At one time I had a romantic relationship with (Bednall), which we both believed might result in marriage. We broke off that relationship in November 2002, although we have continued to date on a nonexclusive basis since that time,’ wrote Bradley, who was divorced in 2004.”

    http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/bradley-extra-marital-affair-role-in-child-placement-surface-b99684605z1-371700831.html

    Per her membership in the Federalist Society, she claims to decide cases based on the law. When it came to her personal life, she flagrantly and over years violated the law, her marriage vows, and the Ten Commandments. Considering that she’s running as Gov. Walker’s, “family values,” candidate, that’s hypocrisy. Judge Kloppenburg’s been married 40-years to the same man. They have kids. She’s the “family values,” candidate.

    Below is more hypocrisy from her website.

    “The role of a justice is to interpret the law, not invent it. The people of Wisconsin are best served by justices who understand and embrace their duty to state what the law is, not what they prefer it to be. Justices should defer to democratic processes that result in the creation of laws by legislatures and not attempt to impose their policy preferences in their decisions. It is essential to our system of justice to have independent justices who will apply the law impartially, free of political agendas.”

    https://www.justicerebeccabradley.com/about/judicial-philosophy/

  2. “… apply the law impartially, free of political agendas”

    Ca-ca del Toro. Is it the concept of impartiality, or the definition of “political” that has escaped Becky here?

    They really do think we’re all as ignorant as their sycophants with the brown noses, don’t they?

    1. I think there’s a disconnect between Justice Bradley and her dark money patrons that are running those ads that keep attacking Judge Kloppenburg for following the law instead of deciding willy-nilly that “criminals” have no rights in our judicial system and decisions ought to be made based on what will “keep us safe” (determined how?) rather than by applying the law and the principles of our Constitution. Someone really ought to ask Justice Bradley about that. How would she have decided those cases differently? And which is more important, honestly applying and working through the legal process to arrive at whatever conclusion it comes to or jumping quickly and dishonestly to a politically expedient outcome?

      After they ask her to lie about how her membership in the Thomas More Society and her past history of partisan political activism will have no influence whatsoever on any of her decisions, of course. Because, Scalia!

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