Illinois’ recent abortion laws are considered the most extreme in the nation, but some legislators in the state are attempting to fight back against its radical abortion position. Rep. Allen Skillicorn has joined other GOP legislators to introduce House Bill 3850, which would restore many of the state’s abortion restrictions. Currently, the Democratic Party controls the Illinois Senate, House, and governorship.
As written, HB 3850 would repeal the state’s Reproductive Health Act, which was signed into law in June. The Reproductive Health Act removed almost all of the state’s abortion restrictions, allowing for partial-birth abortions, removing conscience protections for healthcare workers, expanding abortion to all nine months, removing any protections for abortion survivors, and more.
READ: Even the Chicago Tribune’s editors think Illinois’ abortion bills go too far
In its stead, HB 3850 would create the Illinois Abortion Law of 2019, containing provisions of the Illinois Abortion Law of 1975. The 1975 law included many of the state’s abortion laws before they were repealed by the Reproductive Health Act. HB 3850 also includes provisions which define viability as the time when a fetal heartbeat is detected (usually around six weeks). Additionally, the bill would ban partial-birth abortion while restoring conscience protections for healthcare providers who are unwilling to take part in abortions.
“Many in our Districts and in Illinois were shocked when they discovered that the ‘Reproductive Health Act’ wasn’t just preserving abortion law in Illinois as it currently stood, which proponents repeatedly claimed, but advanced the most radical abortion law in our State’s history and the Nation,” said Skillicorn in a statement. “It is now conceivable that a 14-year old girl lacking parental consent and advanced in her pregnancy could receive an abortion from a ‘health worker’ in a facility lacking minimum medical standards, as practitioner and facility licensing have been revoked. And if she would die due to negligence, no record of the death due to a botched abortion would be reported. It’s stunningly inconceivable!” he said.
Rep. Brad Halbrook, another of the bill’s sponsors, echoed Skillicorn’s sentiments. “Infants in the third trimester can feel pain and most can survive if born early,” he said. “Abortion in the third trimester is infanticide. What the Democrat majority approved this spring goes beyond even what passed in New York. It is imperative we repeal this horrific legislation.”
HB 3850 has been filed and will next be assigned to a legislative committee.
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