ADF letter to Wis. Attorney General: Stop UW Hospitals from illegally funding abortions
ADF letter on behalf of Pro-Life Wisconsin calls out UWHC for attempting to circumvent state law to pay for abortion training at Planned Parenthood facility, elsewhere
ADF attorney sound bite (7/7/11): Matt Bowman
“State agency medical facilities should only be training and paying residents to protect and preserve preborn children--not destroy them,” said ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. “State law makes it illegal for state entities, including the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics Authority, to fund the killing of preborn children through training or other programs. We are confident that Attorney General Van Hollen will acknowledge that UWHCA is not above the law.”
In June, Wis. Stat. § 20.927 was amended by 2011 Wisconsin Act 32, which makes it illegal for the UWHCA to continue its payments to physician-residents to perform abortions at Planned Parenthood Wisconsin or any other facility. The UWHCA claims that the law does not apply to it, despite the act clearly identifying UWHCA as a state “agency.”
“The UWHCA must not be allowed to ignore its legal obligations by pursuing or continuing any scheme in which it seeks to fund the performance of abortions,” the ADF letter to the attorney general states. “The State of Wisconsin has decided that neither ‘funds of the state’ nor ‘funds of state agencies,’ including funds of UWHCA, should pay for abortions.”
In January 2009, ADF uncovered UWHCA’s plans to create a full-service practice for the aborting of 19-22-week-old preborn children, which would have likely involved medical residents participating in the killing of second-trimester babies. Prior to that time, the second-trimester abortions had occurred at Planned Parenthood. ADF attorneys sent a letter that year urging UWHCA to cease it plans for the late-term abortion program, which UWHCA subsequently confirmed it would end at the Madison Surgery Center last December.
ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.
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ABOUT Matt Bowman
Matt Bowman serves as senior counsel and director of regulatory practice for Alliance Defending Freedom, where he leads the team focusing on the impact of administrative law on religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and family. From 2017 to 2020, Bowman was a senior executive service appointee in the Trump administration, serving the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as Deputy General Counsel, and then in the Office for Civil Rights. Prior to joining HHS, Bowman was an accomplished litigator at ADF for over ten years. Before joining ADF in 2006, Bowman served as a law clerk for Judges Samuel A. Alito, Jr., and Michael A. Chagares, at the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and for Judge John M. Roll at the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona. Bowman earned his J.D. summa cum laude and was first in his class at Ave Maria School of Law in 2003. He is a member of the bar of the District of Columbia and Michigan and is admitted to practice at the U.S. Supreme Court and multiple federal appellate and district courts.