Because she combines her activism with her sex-work career, she has direct experience of how the new law has made working women much more vulnerable.
"Governor Walker believes individual workers should be free to decide on their own – without the influence of union bosses – whether they'd like to join a union and pay dues and that's why he signed a law making Wisconsin a right-to-work state," said AshLee Strong, a spokeswoman for Walker's campaign.
What adherents to this approach don't understand is that such laws only make working conditions much more dangerous for sex workers and do very little to curb the demand for commercial sex.
"I acted all the time when I was young, and I preferred theater, but like many people in their early 20s, I thought I needed to make money, and I thought working in law made sense," Mr. Donnellan said.
Art professionals said that Ivy Leaguers with master's degrees typically earn $19,000 for a junior position to $50,000 for a midlevel specialist at an auction house, perhaps a fifth of what peers make working in law or banking.
Since Shelby, nearly half the country has passed laws making it harder for working Americans -- people of color, the disabled, youth, and seniors -- to cast their constitutionally-guaranteed ballots.
Although, in the abstract, the change in the law appears positive, shifting the burden of criminality from women firmly on to their clients, most sex workers believe the new law makes their work much more unsafe.
The federal employees affected by the new law make up the largest work force in the country, and their employer is notoriously slow moving.
By reducing union power, they say, right-to-work laws make pay and conditions worse.
Right-to-work laws make such arrangements illegal.
