Robin Vos willing to require a police report to prove rape or incest for obtaining an abortion
Molly Beck
MADISON – Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said Tuesday he is willing to require women and girls to have a police report to prove they are a victim of sexual assault or incest before they could obtain an abortion.
Vos, R-Rochester, made the comment during in an interview on WSAU as he and other state lawmakers gear up to reconvene for the first time since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, putting back into effect an 1849 state law that bans abortions in all cases except when the mother would die without one.
While Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is in court seeking to overturn the ban, Vos has said he supports amending the state law to include exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.
On Tuesday, Vos also said he was willing to make a police report a requirement in such cases, which would match rules in states like Georgia, Idaho and Oklahoma.
A spokeswoman for Evers said Wednesday he would veto legislation that included the requirement.
"The people of Wisconsin chose to reject radical, divisive policies and reelect Gov. Evers last Tuesday because he’s among the 70% of Wisconsinites who believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases," Britt Cudaback, spokeswoman for Evers, said in a statement referring to recent Marquette University Law School polling.
"Gov. Evers spent his first four years in office defending reproductive freedom and vetoing radical bills like this, and he’ll gladly spend the next four years doing the same."
A spokeswoman for Vos did not answer whether Vos was planning to include the requirement in legislation aimed at amending the state abortion law. A spokeswoman for the anti-abortion lobbying group Wisconsin Right to Life also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The vast majority − 77% − of sexual assaults are not reported to police, according to 2020 data from the U.S. Department of Justice.
"If the only way to access abortion is for a victim of sexual violence to report to law enforcement, they're going to have to engage with a system that most survivors don't want to engage with," said Ian Henderson, policy and systems director of the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault. "Sexual violence is about domination and control, and accessing the full range of reproductive health care (and) accessing abortion services is a way of restoring decision-making power, so any limitation on that is restricting someone's bodily autonomy."
Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said in a statement he is still gauging where his new caucus is on the issue of abortion.
"I am currently working on meeting individually with the caucus and our five new Senate members to get everyone’s perspective before the session this January. As of now, I am not sure where the entire caucus stands on this specific issue, but I look forward to continuing my conversations on this topic and more with them,” LeMahieu said.
Vos said Tuesday he wants Republican lawmakers to make policy and campaign more in line with what the majority of voters think about the issue.
Eighty-four percent of Wisconsin voters, including 73% of Republicans, polled in the most recent Marquette University Law School survey supported rape and incest exceptions to the state's abortion ban.
"Having a discussion about where society is and making sure that we are in tune with the majority in society is important because we have to work on winning the culture war, but we also have to work on making sure that we have a position that is tenable and that makes sense to the vast majority of people," Vos said.
"If every election going forward is about abortion, we've got to figure out ways to either do a better job messaging or to make sure that we are on the majority side for more than just one or two issues."
Senate Minority Leader Melissa Agard, a Democrat from Madison, said requiring rape victims to obtain permission to get an abortion if they become pregnant as a result of a sexual assault is "cruel and unusual punishment."
"We do know that the overwhelming number of sexual assaults that occur are not reported, and forcing a person who has experienced sexual assault or rape or incest to report that trauma when they're not ready to be able to face this flies in the face of all evidence-based policy making,” Agard said.