Judith Davidoff
Sen. Kelda Roys
Sen. Roys at the podium: ‘Abortion could be completely unavailable in our state in a matter of months.’
We raised the money, but now we have to prove it.
In order to confirm that we are eligible for the matching dollars pledged by our funding partners Institute for Nonprofit News ($13,000) and Loud Hound Foundation ($20,000) for our year-end fundraising campaign, we are required to fill out a financial report detailing the money raised — how many new members signed up during the campaign, how much revenue was collected from one-time donations, and so on.
We are also required to fill out an annual membership survey that focuses more on a media outlet’s operations, goals and mission. One section asks the dreaded “impact” question. “Please describe the top two or three ways your organization has been successful in having an impact on your community or audience…. Describe how your journalism has improved lives in your community or audience rather than only telling us about the journalism.”
The question sparked some discussion on the INN listserve. My favorite response was from Jason Pramas, executive editor and associate publisher of DigBoston, who offered his perspective in a haiku:
reporting impact
hard to judge accurately
in the best of times
It’s relatively straightforward to determine the impact of an investigative story that topples a corrupt politician or results in the reversal of a criminal conviction. But it’s harder to measure other types of stories. Articles about candidates and upcoming elections undoubtedly foster civic participation, but how does a publication measure its own part in that? I know that previews about local artists and exhibits and musicians pique the interest of readers, who then turn out for a show or concert, because that happens to me, a lot. But how do we measure the impact with our readers?
Even more elusive, how does a media outlet determine if its journalism improves people’s lives?
Over the course of my career I’ve often felt that my most substantive articles — the in-depth investigations that aim to expose wrongdoing or warn of imminent harm — go quietly into the night, while quicker hits on lighter topics foster much more engagement. I know I’m not the only journalist who has experienced disappointment when an article she thought contained information critical to readers failed to spark the conversation or action hoped for.
That thought hit me over the head at a recent news conference held by reproductive rights advocates and Democratic lawmakers, including Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, urging passage of a bill introduced in February 2021 to repeal the state’s very old criminal abortion ban that has remained on the books even as Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in all states in 1973.
The timing of the news conference was deliberate. As state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), co-author of the Abortion Rights Preservation Act noted, it was just two days before the 49th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and there is good reason to believe it might not see its 50th anniversary. The U.S. Supreme Court, now stacked with conservative justices, heard arguments in December in a case challenging a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks; under Roe, states are prevented from banning abortion before a fetus becomes viable, which is generally considered to be at about 24 weeks into a pregnancy. As New York University law professor Melissa Murray explained to NPR’s David Folkenflik, “Mississippi has invited the court to overrule and overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, two precedents that basically form the corpus of the court’s abortion jurisprudence.”
Roys said that the current makeup of the court is putting abortion rights in jeopardy, “especially here in Wisconsin.”
“What many people might not realize is that if the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, there is already a statute on the books that makes abortion a crime,” she said. “And the reason a lot of people don’t know that is because this law is really old, it’s 172 years old. The law was passed in the 1840s.”
The first story I ever wrote for Isthmus — in 1989 — was a piece about how Wisconsin’s criminal abortion ban was still on the books, more than 15 years after the Roe ruling. I do believe it was something many people didn’t realize at the time; I had to convince news editor Bill Lueders the story was correct. But it was and he put it on the front cover. I’ve written about the law many times since, including in 2018 when I explored why the law wasn’t repealed even when Democrats controlled both houses of the Legislature and Jim Doyle, a Democrat who supported abortion rights, was governor. Short answer: a few anti-abortion Democrats refused to back the repeal.
At the news conference, Roys reiterated that if Roe v. Wade were overturned, no further action would be needed by the Legislature to make abortion illegal in Wisconsin. “And that’s why Rep. Lisa Subeck and I introduced the Abortion Rights Preservation Act a year ago,” she said, “and why we’re hoping that this bill moves forward in the Legislature and Gov. Evers can give us all a signature pen to pass a law that will allow people in Wisconsin to maintain control over our own health care, our own lives and our bodies regardless of what happens in Washington, D.C.”
Roys opened the floor to questions. I noted that we have known about this criminal ban for decades and wondered what citizens could do, even if enlightened at this point, to make a difference when the GOP-controlled Legislature has shown only an eagerness to curtail, not expand, abortion rights.
Roys acknowledged the makeup of the Legislature, blaming extreme gerrymandering: “The Republicans who are in control in the Legislature do not represent the majority of Wisconsin citizens, period. And certainly not on this issue.”
That popular support for abortion rights, she argued, will play a role in the upcoming elections, including the race for governor. “For many years Republican politicians have gotten away with anti-choice rhetoric and policies because they have been protected by that firewall of the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.”
But with the Supreme Court decision looming, “This is a very different situation where abortion could be completely unavailable in our state in a matter of months,” she said. “And I don’t think that most Wisconsinites have fully woken up to that fact.” She said she believes the threat will “dramatically shift people’s voting patterns and their political behavior because Republican politicians will no longer be able to escape the political consequences of doing things that are deeply unpopular. So this is going to have a big effect on the 2022 election.”
Time will tell whether continued coverage will wake Wisconsinites to the impending threat to their reproductive rights and whether Roys’ political calculation proves correct. The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision in the Mississippi case this summer.
