SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) – Access to abortion is essentially blocked in Illinois. But Democrats are looking for ways to further protect the practice and its availability, even for outsiders who would potentially face home-state penalties for seeking treatment here.
Legislation passed by both houses of the General Assembly includes requiring Illinois insurers to cover abortion-inducing drugs, penalizing crisis pregnancy centers for distributing inaccurate information and requiring universities to offer birth control reduced price emergency on campus.
Reaching Beyond Borders is a high-tech measure passed by the House that would require interstate agreements on license plate-reading technology to include a promise that they won’t be used to track people traveling to Illinois for an abortion . He has his sights set on statutes like the recent “abortion trafficking” law signed into law in Idaho.
Lawmakers say they are not circling the wagons amid an increasingly hostile landscape since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion last year. Instead, they see it as a necessary reaction to overreach in other states or, as Rep. Kelly Cassidy has put it, a response to Republican attacks on “people who don’t think they’re equal.”
“We’re saying no matter what they do to you, you’re going to be safe here,” said Cassidy, a Chicago Democrat. “I don’t talk to the politicians who do this, I have nothing to say to them. I’m talking to the people who are victimizing. And I want to do everything in my power to make sure we can keep them as safe as possible.”
Cassidy-sponsored legislation, SB1344, would require any company selling accident or health insurance in Illinois to provide coverage for abortions, pregnancy-terminating drugs, hormone therapy or immunodeficiency virus prevention.
Another measure, which abortion opponents promise will lead to a lawsuit, would slap crisis pregnancy centers with deceptive practices with fines of up to $50,000 under the U.S. Consumer Fraud Act. the state to circulate false information.
The centers, not-for-profit and often faith-based, offer services such as ultrasounds, client counseling and supplies of diapers and formula. There are about 100 such centers in Illinois. Nationally, they far outnumber abortion clinics and their influence is growing.
Democratic Rep. Glen Ellyn Terra Costa Howard, who sponsored SB1909, has examples of literature from centers that postulate “scientifically debunked” information that abortion is linked to breast cancer, for example.
“We regulate how a car can be bought through deceptive practices or how someone could register at a utility agency…” Costa Howard said. “There’s nothing in this bill that limits the First Amendment. It’s not a forced speech issue. You can’t lie and mislead people about health care.”
Ralph Rivera, legislative chair of Illinois Right to Life, said this information has not been debunked, but is based on studies that have reached different conclusions than those highlighted by abortion rights advocates.
“They say it’s misleading if we use our studies, that we can only use their studies,” Rivera said. “This is not deception, it is a difference of opinion about the studies. We are not exaggerating the risk of abortion to cause cancer or infertility.”
Rivera said that if enacted, it would follow a federal lawsuit based on constitutional protections for speech and the ban on laws that are vague.
Pregnancy centers have won in court before. A 2016 law that required them to provide information about where customers could get an abortion was halted by a federal appeals court and is still awaiting trial court arguments. But the US Supreme Court ruled in June 2018 that a similar law in California was unconstitutional.
Rep. Barbara Hernandez, D-Chicago, also won approval for a plan to require universities across the state to provide emergency contraception, often called Plan B, at a reduced cost at kiosks selling their campuses Republicans complained that it forces higher education institutions to pay a state requirement without state money, but Hernandez argued that they can set their own discount and that “this will help a lot of people.”
“They may live a couple of miles away from a Walgreens or CVS. They may not have a car and transportation may not be available,” Hernandez said. “That’s why it’s important to have the product where they are just in case of an emergency.”
Rep. Ann Williams, another Chicago Democrat, won House endorsement last week to require other states to pledge in interstate agreements not to use automatic license plate-reading technology to catch potential abortion patients who drop out the state.
License plate readers also photograph bank license plates for law enforcement purposes. A license plate number of a vehicle carrying a criminal suspect can be checked against the database to determine where he has been or is going. A maverick sheriff could use it to track down someone who drove to Illinois for an abortion, Williams said.
Williams’ legislation, sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Sara Feigenholz, D-Chicago, was scheduled for a Senate committee hearing Wednesday. Sen. Celina Villanueva, D-Chicago, led the other measures through the Senate. They await the transfer to Governor JB Pritzker, an ardent supporter of abortion rights.
“When states around us are taking such extreme steps … we have to step back. This is not ideal. This is not what the United States of America is supposed to be dealing with. But this is where we are now…” Williams said. “Are we making life a little more difficult? Probably. But we weren’t the ones who wanted to deprive more than half of the population of rights (abortions).”
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