A bill to expand Illinoisans' rights to end pregnancies on demand, including because of the sex of the fetus, and force taxpayers to foot the bill goes way too far, Rep. Tom Morrison (R-Palatine) said on a radio talk show recently.
"This is expansion of taxpayer abortion for virtually any reason," Morrison said on the Chicago-based "Illinois Rising." "That's what makes this bill so outrageously extreme."
Morrison argued that the bill’s passage was driven in part by false allegations that an overturn of the landmark Roe v Wade decision is imminent because of a new conservative justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Neil Gorsuch's appointment to the nation's highest court simply replaced one conservative justice, the late Antonin Scalia, who died last year, with another, Morrison said.
"There's no tipping of the balance on the Supreme Court," Morrison said. "Furthermore, even if Roe v Wade were to be overturned at some point in the distant future, every state would have to proactively outlaw abortion."
"Illinois Rising" is co-hosted by Illinois Opportunity Project co-founder Dan Proft, who is Liberty Principles PAC chairperson and treasurer, as well as a senior fellow at the Chicago-based conservative think tank Illinois Policy Institute. "Illinois Rising" is a presentation of the Illinois Policy Institute.
Proft is also a principal of Local Government Information Services, which owns this publication.
The abortion bill, HB40, was introduced by Rep. Sara Feigenholtz (D-Chicago). It passed the House on April 25 by a vote of 62 to 55, mostly along partisan lines, with a few Democrats voting against it.
The House vote came only hours after Feigenholtz and hundreds of other women from more than 50 organizations marched at the State Capitol and spoke about women’s rights.
"Today is a victory for every woman in our state because it protects every woman’s right to choose," Feigenholtz said, according to a press release. "I applaud my colleagues who took the critical vote that removed the dangerous anti-choice trigger language from the original act. Today, we stated unequivocally that access to safe legal abortion will remain protected in Illinois."
There's no denying that Feigenholtz's support of the legislation was critical to its passage, Morrison said.
"She was able to get a lot of people ginned up about this," he said.
Morrison said constituents who encouraged him to vote for the bill were largely misinformed about it.
"I just want to clarify something right at the get-go," he said. "You talk about Medicaid funding of abortion. For a lot of people, they don't understand, we already cover abortions in the cases of the life of the mother, the health of the mother, rape and incest. That is current law for Medicaid and state group health insurance. What this issue was about is should we expand abortion coverage for virtually any reason."
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