On May 27, 2019, the Honorable Peter Breen, former Illinois Representative and Thomas More Society Vice President and Senior Counsel, issued a brief analysis and response to previous night's amendments of the bill to create the Illinois “Reproductive Health Act".

Late Term and Non-Physician Abortions, Less Regulations Promised if Bill Passes

This bill remains the most radically pro-abortion measure of its kind and would make Illinois an abortion destination for the country. The amendment filed last night does nothing to change the core of the bill that bears the deliberately deceptive title ‘Reproductive Health Act.’

The bill, as amended, would remove any penalty for performing late-term abortions, allow nurses to perform medication abortions, and eliminate licensing and health and safety inspections of abortion clinics. The bill would strip all rights from unborn children and wipe nearly every abortion regulation off the books in Illinois, subjecting any that remain to a court challenge under a near-impossible-to-meet ‘strict scrutiny’ standard.

Many Preemie Babies to Have Zero Legal Rights

"The amended bill is more barbarous than the original bill in adding a definition of ‘viability’ that expressly excludes legal protection for many babies who now live and thrive when born premature- they would have zero legal rights or protections under the measure," said Breen.

Dismemberment of Preemie Babies who Feel Pain without Anesthesia

These preemie babies, who can feel pain, are expressly allowed to be aborted, without any provision for anesthesia or other comfort as they are dismembered. And the amendment adds a definition of ‘health’ that guts any protection for any baby so that - when challenged at the committee hearing, the ACLU’s representative couldn’t identify even one single abortion that would be prohibited if this bill becomes law. Moreover, criminal and civil penalties for illegal abortions under current law would be repealed - along with the specific requirement to document reasons for post-viability abortions - making toothless any alleged limits on abortion still in existence.

Bill Makes Abortion a Fundamental Right even for 13 Year Old without Parental Notice

The amended bill would create a ‘fundamental right…to have an abortion, and to make autonomous decisions about how to exercise that right,’ even for teenagers as young as 13 and 14 years old. By creating a ‘fundamental right’ to abortion, the bill would give abortion the strongest protections in law, above even the First Amendment right to free speech. Abortion would become the primary and principal right in Illinois, above all others.

Current Illinois Parental Notice Act has Decreased Abortion Rates by 57%

The ACLU has already made clear it will use this ‘fundamental right…to make autonomous decisions’ language to attack the highly successful Illinois Parental Notice of Abortion Act. After parental notice became effective in Illinois six years ago, the underage abortion rate in Illinois plummeted by 57 percent. The Illinois Parental Notice law stopped the flood of thousands of out-of-state teenagers who had been brought to Illinois to get secret abortions without their parents’ knowledge, and the parental notice law has resulted in thousands of Illinois teenagers choosing to bring their children to term, instead of aborting them.

New Bill Forces All Illinois Insurance to Cover Elective Abortions, Including Church Plans

The amended bill requires every health insurance policy in Illinois to cover elective abortions, even late-term abortions. There are no exceptions for churches, religious nonprofits, or pro-life individuals and small business owners. The bill even strikes current law that protects parents from having to pay for a child’s abortion, when performed without parental consent. The bill also strips the express right in current law for health care workers to choose not to participate in abortions, leaving only the ‘Health Care Right of Conscience Act,’ whose provisions were weakened by amendment of the Democratic majority just a few years ago - that amendment has been temporarily enjoined in the courts, as a result of lawsuits by the Thomas More Society and others.

Licensing Requirements will be Removed and Clinics Would Operate Unfettered

The stripping of any licensing requirement from abortion clinics removes the only effective tool the government has to regulate and shut down unsanitary and unsafe abortion clinics. Licensing regulations have been used in the past to shut down dirty and disgusting facilities in the Rockford, Peoria, and Chicago areas. Under this bill, abortion clinics like Rockford’s ‘House of Horrors’ would operate unfettered.

Legislators who Vote for this Bill will have a Legacy of Dehumanization of Unborn

The legacy of any legislator who votes for this bill will be that of cruel dehumanization on a mass scale. Those legislators will bear the legacy of thousands of late-term dismemberment abortions inflicted on perfectly healthy children. Those legislators will bear the legacy of many thousands more children aborted in Illinois instead of allowed to live, with the resulting psychological trauma to their mothers, including teenagers, who might otherwise have brought their children to term. Those legislators will bear the legacy of harm done to those women who suffer from abortions performed in filthy unlicensed clinics.

The Thomas More Society previously released a detailed analysis of the underlying bill, by Constitutional Law expert Paul Benjamin Linton, who called the measure, “the most radical piece of abortion legislation that has ever been introduced in Illinois, and…the most radical proposed in any state to date.” That assessment remains true after the amendment.

According to the Thomas More Society's analysis, the original bills would do the following:

• Allow abortions for any reason throughout all nine months of pregnancy - the amendment does not change this, as civil and criminal penalties are eliminated, recording requirements repealed, and there are no limits under the new “health” definition
• Eliminate any restrictions on where abortions may be performed
• Allow non-physicians, including nurses and physician assistants, to perform medical abortions
• Undermine and threaten institutional and individual rights of conscience
• Jeopardize any meaningful regulation of abortion clinics
• Require private health insurance policies to include coverage for all abortions, with no exemptions, even for churches and other religious organizations
• Eliminate any requirement to investigate fetal deaths or maternal deaths resulting from abortion
• Repeal law prohibiting “kickbacks” for abortion referrals
• Put at risk the highly successful Parental Notice of Abortion Act, which has reduced abortions on Illinois minors by over 55 percent since 2012

Governor and Democratic Supermajorities are Fast-tracking the Legislation

Breen commented previously on the original bills: “These bills violate the deepest moral and ethical convictions of millions of Illinoisans. While the Democratic supermajorities in the General Assembly and Governor Pritzker seem dead set on speeding these radical measures into law, the citizens of this state can and must make their voices heard to slow down and stop this process. We especially don’t want to go back to the bad old days in our state, when thousands of secret abortions were performed in Illinois on underage girls, both those from our state and the many girls brought here from out of state.”

The bill is pending in the 101st General Assembly as Senate Bill 25. The Thomas More Society detailed analysis can be found here.

Click this link for a printable version of this article: IL RHA Abortion Senate Bill 25.