Letter to the Editor: Disingenuous Jacque

Senator André Jacque frequently professes “pro-life” rhetoric; biblical, dominionist groupthink; and the vile, dogmatic, religious divide-and-conquer incivility that led to eliminating state-taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood in Wisconsin, clinic closings and diminishing affordable health-care options for thousands of Wisconsin women and families.

His work undermining women’s rights over health-care decisions, access and options – thus also curbing civil liberties for everyone – is an unmistakably egregious form of societal violence, especially against women. Jacque should clearly understand this.

On Dec. 2 on Wisconsin Public Radio (wpr.org/shows/state-capitol-report-sen-andre-jacque-rep-amy-loudenbeck), Jacque touted new proposed legislation to enhance “victim rights.” His legislative record defies credibility for that proposition. He has not yet co-sponsored proposed legislation to prevent a future backlog of untested rape kits and didn’t press Sen. Fitzgerald for a GOP vote on recent enhanced gun-violence-prevention bills.

Considering wider definitions of “victims,” Jacque ignores the victims of his own senate district’s enormous industrial agricultural pollution problem, which is literally poisoning his rural constituents. What about the “rights” of these victims who are suffering continuous attacks on their physical health, psychological well-being and financial security (property-value loss, health-care and pollution-abatement costs)? Children about to be removed from federal lunch programs aren’t victims? Are migrant farm laborers – essential to corporate dairy interests – being victimized?

Jacque aligns squarely with Joel Kitchens’ approach toward protecting our irreplaceable natural resources. Industrial farming and dairy “profitability” are the first and only precedent. Legislatively enabling this corporate violence against nature and freely excusing these environmental terrorists of all responsibility for victimizing the public still goes meaningfully unchallenged by them.

On WPR, Jacque claimed being informed through talks at the Madison Club. Listening to constituents, strictly regulating CAFOs and enacting nonpartisan redistricting and affordable health care, housing and living wages apparently don’t mesh with Jacque’s personal legislative approach: “the art of the possible.” Crisis-level public needs demand effort but are apparently beyond his legislative ability and elitist intellectualism. 

His rationale to criminalize medical research on fetal body parts after abortions, however, was simple: “It offends human dignity.” That same statement aptly describes Jacque’s legislative career.

Donald Freix

Fish Creek, Wisconsin