Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed a bill Friday which repealed a decades-old act that required that parents be notified when a minor 17 or younger seeks abortion.
The Democratic governor called the repeal of the 1995 requirement “essential” in a time when “reproductive rights” are under attack as the Supreme Court considers a case which could ultimately weaken or even repeal Roe v. Wade.
The repeal will go into effect on January 1, 2024.
The Associated Press reported that Pritzker said the 1995 had punished minors who may have been seeking abortion after suffering abuse in the home or being raped.
The current political climate was clearly a factor as well.
“With reproductive rights under attack across the nation, Illinois is once again establishing itself as a leader in ensuring access to health care services,” Pritzker said.
Opponents in Illinois’ government, however, said that the 1995 law was “common sense” and repealing it would violate parental rights and put minors at risk.
“Parents deserve the right to know if their minor child is seeking any major medical procedure, especially one like an abortion where there can be serious short and long term consequences,” GOP Rep. Avery Bourne said. “Instead, today the Democrat majority has chosen to recklessly push those rights to the wayside.”
HD Editor’s Note: Why Is This News Biblically Relevant?
Alliance Defending Freedom on Twitter, condemned the Illinois Governor’s decision stating that the abortion industry notoriously has put “profits over children.”
“Underage children cannot get their ears pierced without parental consent, but in Illinois, they can undergo an abortion procedure without their parents ever knowing,” the group wrote. “The abortion industry puts profits over people…profits over children.”
As some Twitter users have pointed out, this is the same Governor who signed Senate Bill 818 (sexual education curriculum guidelines) into law which was heavily criticized by conservatives for its “sexuality charged” content and promotion of dangerous gender ideology.
The assistant director of legislative affairs for the Illinois Pro-Family Alliance, Molly Malone, rebuked the Bill in August saying that it promotes “abortion, the LGBT lifestyle,” and “sexualize[s] students.”
First, the Governor forced schools to promote abortion and sexualize children through their new sex-ed curriculum guidelines, now he has signed a bill keeping parents in the dark, further promoting the deadly abortion procedure to impressionable children.
It is important to understand that the effort to exchange Biblical teaching for overtly secular education in the classrooms has had a detrimental effect on how children view morality and the topic of abortion.
With God removed:
- Morality is subjective, not determined by Biblical Standards
- A baby in the womb is not considered a human life (therefore abortion is not murder)
- Sex is not solely for marriage
- Abortion is justified by convenience and sad tales meant to stir up emotion
With God:
- We know that life begins at conception (Psalm 22:10, Psalm 139:13-16, Jer. 1:5)
- We know each of us is made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27)
- We know God’s design for sex was that it remain within marriage (Heb. 13:4, Gen. 2:24, 1 Corin. 6:18-20)
- We know factors such as ethnicity, deformity, and gender do not determine a person’s right to life (Gal. 3:28, Acts 17:26, 1 Sam. 16:7)
- We know poverty, rape, inconvenience, and shame are not valid excuses to end a human life (Exodus 20:13, John 8:44)
- We know child sacrifice, the murder of innocent children “pollutes the land with blood” (Psalm 106:38-39)
- We know God hates hands that shed innocent blood (Proverbs 6:16-19)
- We know abortion is a sin to be repented of and there is forgiveness through the shed blood of Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:1-5, John 3:16, Isaiah 53)