Note: Think that anti-choice politicians and activists aren’t trying to outlaw contraception?  Think again.  Follow along in an ongoing series that proves beyond a doubt that they really are coming for your birth control.

Wausau, Wisconsin, doesn’t have a clinic that provides abortion services. But that doesn’t mean anti-choice protesters in the community are willing to bypass the tradition that is the “40 Days for Life” vigil, a twice-yearly event where religious advocates try to pray to “end abortion.”

No, in Wausau, they simply took their protest to the sidewalk in front of Family Planning Services. Those services? Birth control, WIC distribution, STI screenings.

Oh, and basic health care, too.

Via the New Civil Rights Movement:

The anxious girl hides her face, painfully aware someone passing by may recognize her, but she bravely trudges past the protesters. Some merely stare at her accusingly. Others hiss words meant to shame her. She wants to run away, but she has no money, and there is nowhere else she can go for help. Hers is a torment that cannot be prayed away. Her eyes fill with tears, but she refuses to let them fall. She keeps her gaze on the entrance; five more steps, three, two. One more step and a push of the door and this nightmare will be over. Inside she will find medical help. She will find compassion without judgment. After weeks of suffering, of tossing and turning and worrying about what she was going to do, the teen is about to find someone who will help her end her unwanted……… yeast infection.

Those who protested the clinic see it as just as “dangerous” as those that provide abortions. According to the participants (members of Pro-Life Wisconsin, of course), the fact that they allow contraception at all, especially to teens, shows they are willfully promoting illicit, illegal behavior.

State financing of Family Planning Health Services isn’t just a failed policy, however. It’s also a policy that encourages illegal behavior. The age of sexual consent in Wisconsin is 16. Yet FPHS proudly distributes contraception to kids as young as 15.

Look at it this way: if you sold cigarettes to kids younger than 18, you’d be prosecuted. If you sold a shotgun to the same kids, you’d be prosecuted.

But when Family Planning Health Services facilitates sex for kids under 16, it’s rewarded with hundreds of thousands of dollars from Wisconsin’s taxpayers. In no other situation do Wisconsin taxpayers fund organizations that promote and facilitate criminal activity.

Thank goodness the 40 Days vigils are over. Now teens can get treatment for their vaginal discharge unencumbered. Well, until April, that is, when it will all start again.

After all, they are still coming for your birth control (and Monistat).