Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager has issued a "formal" opinion stating Wisconsin law prohibits both employers (including employers affiliated with a church whose tenets prohibits the use of contraceptives) and state colleges and universities from excluding prescription contraceptives from their drug plans. It's increasingly obvious that what the liberals in Madison cannot pull off legislatively, they will seek to ram through the courts.

Pregnancy is not a disease. Unborn children are not the moral or legal equivalent of tumors. The government should not force insurance companies — and the policyholders who will pay for this expansion through increased premiums — to cover drugs and devices that are purely elective.

Importantly, many of these so-called contraceptive devices do not always prevent conception. Instead, they can and often do act to cause early abortions by preventing the implantation of the new-conceived human being. Just read the tiny print inside the packing of the patch, the pill or "emergency contraception." Forcing birth control coverage is forcing abortion coverage. Let's also remember many of these drugs and devices come with serious, sometimes deadly side-effects.

Yet the so-called pro-choice movement wants the millions of Americans who oppose abortion and know human life beings at the moment of fertilization to pay — through their insurance premiums — for the elective actions of others. What about our choice? What about our consciences? And what about the rights of those health insurers and health providers who have religious, moral or ethical objections to offering these drugs and devices, which they know to be the antithesis of true health care and to be morally prohibitive?

Compounding skyrocketing health insurance premiums by mandating medically unnecessary items is economically foolish. Forced to cover such expenses, companies may respond by downsizing or eliminating health care coverage altogether, creating a health risk.

Hopefully, no Wisconsin court will share Lautenschlager's opinion. That would certainly be in the best interest of the conscience, economy and health of our great state.

For more information on this topic, please visit our Web site at www.prolifewisconsin.org.

Hamill is the state director of Pro-Life Wisconsin.

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