In social media posts and a press release, Lee attacked a 2011 thesis Bichler wrote at the University of South Carolina.
Lee called Bichler's writing “radical, anti-American, out-of-touch thinking," citing two sentences from the thesis:
“…[P]erhaps we can look at the extension of quality US health care to undocumented immigrants from the global South as reparations for the cost of market externalities that US global economic policy and practice extract from those countries.” She went on: “[W]e, as US citizens are actually costing many other world citizens in ways and amounts that we will never be able to repay.”
The lines appear near the end of Bichler’s 211-page thesis on the reproductive healthcare experiences of Latinas in the Washington, DC metro area, part of her MA in Visual and Cultural Anthropology. In her conclusion, Bichler discussed the unrecognized “social and economic contributions of mothers and immigrant women.”
Reached for comment, a campaign spokesperson told WHQR that Bichler does not endorse providing healthcare for non-citizens, and criticized Lee over rising healthcare costs.
“Healthcare costs are out of reach for many people across this district, a problem Michael Lee has failed to fix. With costs soaring, Jessica certainly does not believe taxpayers should be footing the bill for healthcare for undocumented immigrants,” campaign manager Shelly O’Rourke wrote in an email.
“Jessica’s policy priorities remain the same — lowering costs, strengthening our schools, protecting our water, and increasing government transparency and accountability,” she added.
Lee and Bichler have clashed repeatedly during the election, including over the Lee campaign’s AI-generated ad mocking Bichler and her yoga practice, and Bichler’s claims about Lee’s role in PFAS regulation.
Other criticisms
Lee’s campaign appears to have picked up on the 15-year-old thesis from Cassie Clark, a conservative writer and podcaster who posts under her own name and Where the Dogwood Blooms.
On Friday, Clark posted about Bichler’s thesis on her Patreon page, sharing excerpts on X, which were then shared by several other Republican and conservative figures, including UNC System and Endowment board member Woody White, and New Hanover County GOP Chairman John Hinnant, who called Bichler “absolutely bat shit crazy.”
Clark took issue with the word ‘reparation,’ and Bichler’s suggestion that “anti-immigrant groups in the Washington Metropolitan area [look] at the global economic structure beyond the county or state level.” Clark granted that Lee’s record deserved scrutiny — referring obliquely to WHQR’s recent reporting on PFAS regulation — but criticized the media for not taking a “deep dive into Bichler’s own work.” (Clark did acknowledge that the thesis is a decade and a half old, and that it was “behind a campus login,” but argued its existence was “hardly a secret.”)
Clark and those who shared her post also criticized a section where Bichler documented that “Healthcare workers and advocacy workers emphasized the importance of a comprehensive educational program starting at an early age that teaches not only human sexuality, but self-respect and healthy relationships between genders.”
O’Rourke noted that Bichler was not giving her opinion, but reporting the feedback from focus group research.
In Bichler’s thesis conclusion, she gives her actual recommendations.
“I assume that families and communities would benefit from more open and prevalent discussions of human sexuality and fertility, which I believe would minimize misconceptions, harmful taboos, and embarrassment that prevent people from seeking care and support,” she wrote.
“My recommendations include community-based doula and health promotores [community members who help connect people to healthcare services] models for education and support, which could be supplemented by information and family discussion material delivered through short videos and fotonovelas,” which Bichler described as “A popular media form in Latin American culture, the fotonovela examines human relationships and social issues as represented in the lives of a group of fictional characters. Fotonovelas appear similar to comic books regarding visual style and present a melodramtic [sic] storyline with [a] moral lesson.”
Disclosure notice: Shelly O’Rourke is a member of the WHQR Board of Directors, which has no role in reporting or editorial decisions.
