“If you’re always expanding government programs, you get people hooked on government and they don’t want to do it themselves. They expect it,” he said.

Sillars is running as a “pro-life” candidate with “traditional, Christian values,” an anti-abortion stance that some Democrats hope will backfire up and down the ballot.

Kristin Lyerly, an obstetrician-gynecologist and a Democrat, has made access to abortion and contraception central to her campaign to fill the congressional seat vacated by Mike Gallagher, a Republican who resigned in April.

Lyerly lives outside Green Bay but practices in Minnesota after facing threats and harassment, largely from conservative extremists, she said. She was a plaintiff in the state’s legal bid to block Republicans from halting access to abortions. Abortions still are not available everywhere in Wisconsin, she said.

“It is incumbent upon me as a physician and a woman to stand up and to use my voice,” Lyerly said. “This is an issue that people in this district might not be shouting about, but they’re having conversations about it, and they’re going to vote on it.”

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This article was produced by KFF Health News , which publishes California Healthline , an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation .

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