Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed an executive order making Illinois one of the most regressive states in America on the right to life.
Gov. Pritzker’s executive order mandates a review of all state employee group health insurance plans to secure or expand abortion interests. Gov. Pritzker appeared at a press conference at Planned Parenthood of Illinois to sign the executive order:
Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Tuesday signed an executive order aimed at ensuring the state is properly enforcing a politically divisive law that allows for the taxpayer funding of abortions — saying he was “concerned” former Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration wasn’t “making sure that it was enforced for state government employees.”
The move prompted one Republican legislator to accuse Pritzker of running a “highly-politicized and left wing administration.”
Pritzker signed the executive order at a Planned Parenthood of Illinois office in Chicago, while also commemorating the 46th anniversary of the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which effectively legalized abortion across the nation. Pritzker said his order will instruct the Illinois Department of Central Management and Services to make sure all state insurance plans are fully compliant with the law by July 1. It also instructs the department to detail coverage for abortions and identify where coverage doesn’t comply with the law.
“Since abortion was legalized, Illinois has established a record of repeated incidents of abortion clinic fraud, abuses, substandard and dangerous conditions, as well as lax record keeping and enforcement by Illinois public health officials,” shared Clarke Forsythe, Senior Counsel at Americans United for Life. “Milquetoast pro-choice rhetoric aside, Governor Pritzker’s rescission of health and safety regulations is exactly the wrong way to go in the current climate of lax enforcement and will only lower the standard of care for women in Illinois.”
Forsythe and Bradley N. Kehr, former AUL Government Affairs Counsel, co-authored “A Road Map Through the Supreme Court’s Back Alley” in 2012 in the Villanova Law Review, noting: “…the Chicago Sun-Times published a twelve-part series on the terrible conditions found in abortion clinics based on an undercover investigation with the Better Government Association (BGA). In the summer of 2011, the Chicago Tribune found six deaths from abortion and 4,000 injuries that had never been reported by the Illinois Department of Health.”
“There appears to be a pernicious race to the bottom occurring among some states interested in regressive and anti-science law and policy,” notes Catherine Glenn Foster, President & CEO of Americans United for Life. “Illinois joins New York as a place where common sense health and safety protections, not to speak of medically sound legal definitions of human life, are ignored in pursuit of a radical political agenda.”
