Why are so many public schools in Illinois keeping so many secrets from the public? Last August, Christopher Rufo disclosed that Lurie’s Children’s Hospital, unbeknownst to parents or the general public, was collaborating with Chicago area schools to promote “radical gender theory, trans activism, and sexually explicit materials in at least four Chicago-area public school systems: District 75, District 120, District 181, and District 204.” Three of these school districts are elementary districts and one is a high school district.

We don’t know how many other school districts receive training from Lurie. But we have learned of at least one other, Palatine School District 15, another elementary school district. In January, Dawn Ravine, Lurie’s Sexuality Education Program Coordinator reportedly provided training to the District’s P.E./Health teachers during a planned institute day.

When parents learned of this training that was provided to the teachers, it came as a surprise since the District had voted to reject the National Sex Ed Standards. Why are the teachers being taught about subjects that were part of those standards, the parents asked? The District 15 school board did nothing to resolve the confusion. Instead of explaining the purpose of the training, the board Chair attacked the critics as liars at the most recent board meeting last week.

Does the school board even know why the training was held?

It appears that this training first exposed by Rufo has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not the National Sex Ed Standards will be implemented by any specific district. Instead, it appears to be the result of guidance directed by the Illinois State Board of Education found here.

Several acts and suggested policies were developed after Governor JB Pritzker issued an executive order in 2019 to create a task force to investigate and report on creating affirming and inclusive schools to welcome, support and affirm transgender, non-binary and gender non-conforming children and adolescents.  The Task Force issued its report in January, 2020.

It doesn’t look like there was a single conservative, or even a liberal with a differing view, on the Task Force. The ACLU was represented, but neither ADF nor the Thomas More Society were anywhere to be seen. There were several students on the Task Force, but no former students who had de-transitioned. The Task Force sought the views and advice of the Trevor Project, but not the position of the Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine. Do you suppose the Governor decided what the report would say before it was written?

The laws, regulations and suggested policies under Pritzker’s administration fully embrace the view that children suffering from gender dysphoria should be affirmed, that children should be allowed to “transition” without parental knowledge or involvement, that trans girls should be allowed to use the same facilities as biological girls and that they be allowed to play on girls teams.

Under Governor Pritzker’s guidance, the Illinois State Board of Education has set up a network of laws, regulations and suggested policies that seemingly tie the hands of local school boards. Ideologically, the board administrators and elected board members in Illinois schools mostly are not inclined to push back against the ISBE. If a majority of the board were so inclined, they likely would get advice from the board lawyers that the schools have to go along with what the state wants. Besides, they would be (and have been) told, suing the state over any issue would be very costly and not good stewardship of public tax funds.

Lost in the discussion is consideration for what is best for the children and what parents want.

Parents are not powerless, however. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on numerous occasions that parents have a right to control what their children are taught. Given the current state of education in Illinois, it might be best for parents to home school their children or to send them to a private faith-based school that focuses on STEM subjects and English. If enough children are pulled out of school, it might prompt a more child and parent friendly environment.

If home schooling or sending children to a sane private school is not possible, the only thing that can be done is for parents to opt their children out of everything they don’t like—sex ed, SEL, counseling by any member of the school staff or any contractor, instruction on any subject other than math, science, biology, engineering, technology, English, or other subject the parents might approve. At the very least, though, parents will have to closely monitor what their children are taught in those classes–what textbooks, websites, videos, research projects, etc.

Illinois government, the ISBE, local boards along with the lawyers and administrators they hire, the teachers’ unions, and activist teachers have proven themselves to be completely secretive and untrustworthy. Inaction and inattention have brought us to this point. The result is we get exactly the government we deserve and there is nobody out there to fix it for us.

Unless parents get involved like they did in Virginia, nothing is going to change.

Ever since the unprecedented leak of an early draft of the Dobbs decision from the U.S. Supreme Court which may overturn Roe v. Wade, the “shock troops of tolerance” have been busy interrupting church services. And they have done much destruction of crisis pregnancy centers.

They claim to be “pro-choice,” but choice involves options. And these people want to make sure women make only one choice—the choice of abortion. When there’s only one choice, then “pro-choice” is an oxymoron.

Since May 2, when the draft decision was leaked, consider what has happened:

• There have been numerous disruptions of church services, usually Catholic ones. However, even Joel Osteen’s church service was interrupted by topless promoters of abortion.

• There have been illegal protests in front of the homes of conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justices to intimidate them to change their opinion.

• There have been at least 59 attacks on crisis pregnancy centers, which are all funded by private donations and which do the Lord’s work to provide loving alternatives to abortion.

Many of these attacks have been done through an ad hoc organization called “Jane’s Revenge.”

The name would imply revenge on behalf of “Jane Roe” from the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court pro-abortion decision, Roe v. Wade. Jane’s Revenge declares open season on crisis pregnancy centers across the nation:

“From here forward, any anti-choice group who closes their doors, and stops operating will no longer be a target. But until you do, it’s open season, and we know where your operations are. The infrastructure of the enslavers will not survive. We will never stop, back down, slow down, or retreat.”

A friend of mine works in a crisis pregnancy center. She told me in an email over the weekend: “I worked in the Emergency Dept as a RN for 25 years with police security, but I never dreamed that working at a pro-life clinic would be a high risk job!”

And this damage is being done in the name of Jane Roe? As the record shows, Jane Roe’s identity was revealed in 1987, and her name was Norma McCorvey. It turns out McCorvey had not been raped (as claimed in the case). She had gotten pregnant from her boyfriend, and she just wanted an abortion.

ACLU attorney Sarah Weddington lied to her as she assured McCorvey she could get an abortion, but what Weddington really wanted was McCorvey’s participation in what became Roe v. Wade.

Then in the late 1990s, something amazing happened. Norma McCorvey made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and came to oppose abortion. Thus, Roe came to agree with Wade. Henry Wade had been the District Attorney of Dallas County, and Roe v. Wade challenged Texas’s pro-life law.

Norma McCorvey wrote her story in her 1997 book, Won By Love (with co-author Gary Thomas). The subtitle of that book is “Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade Speaks Out for the Unborn as She Shares Her New Conviction for Life.”

And now, in the name of Jane Roe, anarchists and ANTIFA-types are carrying out acts of vandalism and damage of pregnancy centers that simply exist to provide loving alternatives to abortion.

One man who knew McCorvey, who died in 2017, is Father Frank Pavone, the president of Priests for Life. He even baptized her and spent time sharing Scriptures and Church teaching with her.

I asked him for a comment on the former “Jane Roe” since these groups are doing damage to try and disrupt pro-life work in her name. Father Pavone told me:

“As for Norma McCorvey, hers was a life of repentance, not of revenge. She wouldn’t have needed to take ‘revenge’ on pro-life people anyway, because she was one of us. She would have abhorred the way the pro-abortion people are acting now. In fact, she didn’t like them even when she was on their side. She thought they were arrogant and disrespectful of her.”

He adds,

“The abortion supporters were handed abortion-on-demand on a silver platter by Roe v. Wade. They didn’t have to engage in the laborious, tedious process of elections, lobbying, debating, persuading and lawmaking. Instead, a ‘constitutional right’ was just created for them.

Now that it is being taken away, they whine and stomp their feet like a child.”

Where is the U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in all this? When is he going to act against this intimidation? Our nation’s founders said that the Creator has endowed us with “unalienable rights”—first among these is “the right to life.”

Father Pavone has the final word: “Of course, their attacks on our churches are because when we restrict abortion, they perceive it as an attack on theirs. The abortion clinics are their churches, abortion-on-demand is their dogma, and abortion itself is their sacrament. May they be given the grace of repentance.”

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

The ugly truth about leftists is that their desire for freedom extends only to members of the hive. Only worker bees enslaved to the drag Queen should be permitted to speak in the virtual public square. If Americans didn’t realize that before, they sure know it now from the unhinged responses of leftists to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter. They don’t fear that Musk will clamp down on speech, or that he’ll create new algorithms that censor “progressive” speech, or that Twitter will ban news stories. No, they fear Musk will allow free speech on Twitter, including speech leftists hate, which leftists call “hate speech.” They unjustifiably fear Musk might treat leftists like Dorsey and Zuckerberg have treated the right.

One of the most eye-popping responses to Musk’s purchase came from MSNBC host Ari Melber who appeared completely ignorant of the irony dripping from his lips:

If you own all of Twitter or Facebook or what have you, you don’t have to explain yourself, you don’t even have to be transparent, you could secretly ban one party’s candidate or all of its candidates, all of it nominees. Or you could just secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else and the rest of us might not even find about it till after the election.

Twitter employee and proud illegal “Latinx” Laura i. Gomez shares Melber’s concern that a free Twitter may prevent leftist candidates from being elected:

A M*sk-owned Twitter is one of the greatest threats to the 2022 and 2024 elections. We are f*cked if this happens.

What leftists most hate is the possibility that Americans will now be able to express freely their beliefs about topics like homosexuality, marriage, “trans”-cultism, and racist “anti-racism.” Leftists think conservative beliefs on these topics are offensive, destructive, and dangerous and want them censored, while they—leftists—should remain free to share their beliefs, which half the country finds offensive, destructive, and dangerous. Leftists arrogate to themselves the right to decide for the entire country which beliefs are hateful, dangerous, and should be censored.

Since the lion’s share of banning and shadow-banning by social media platforms pertains to dissent from their views of sexuality, a few words on that topic are in order.

For the umpteenth time, believing homoerotic acts or cross-sex impersonation are immoral and harmful does not constitute hatred of persons. Nor are public expressions of those beliefs calls to violence.

Moral disapproval of homoerotic acts and cross-sex impersonation no more constitute hatred of persons who engage in them than does moral disapproval of consensual adult incest, zoophilia, or polyamory constitute hatred of persons who engage in those acts. Yet, no one is accused of being “haters” for expressing disapproval of sibling “love,” animal “love,” or sexual profligacy. And public expressions of disapproval of these forms of “love” are not banned for violating “community standards” on social media.

(As a relevant aside, no public schools promote “acceptance” of these forms of “love”—not even in the service of diversity, inclusion, and tolerance. And here I thought to leftists “love is love.”)

The so-called “freedom” that Twitter, Facebook, and Ari Melber fancy is not the freedom Americans once cherished and led to the ACLU’s decision in the 1970’s to defend the right of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois—the home of many Jews and survivors of the Holocaust. The “freedom” leftists love is the tyranny that fascists everywhere love.

If Americans didn’t fear loss of employment over speaking freely, there would be even more free speech in the virtual public square. And if the ability to make a living in America—particularly in an America run by corporate behemoths—depends on censorship of ideas that leftists hate, the First Amendment means nothing.

Elon Musk is right:

Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.

The ACLU once believed that. In 1968, Eleanor Holmes Norton, a young black attorney working for the ACLU, defended the right of the National States’ Rights Party, a white supremacist group, to hold a rally. Looking back on her decision, Norton said,

[T]he reason that we had free speech, continue to have free speech, particularly as African Americans, is because nobody could keep us from speaking. They could keep us from using the same facilities, they could keep us from voting. But the First Amendment said that everybody can talk. It turns out that free speech is most important to those who have the least in our society.

Former ACLU Executive Director Aryeh Neier expanded on the Holmes’ decision:

Eleanor won that case nine nothing in the U.S. Supreme Court. Ultimately anyone can be silenced. It depends who’s in power at a given moment, who they want to silence, whether they want to silence them for political reasons or for corrupt reasons. There can be all kinds of reasons to want to cut off somebody’s speech. And the only way to prevail in free speech cases is to stand for the principle of freedom of speech, to say that freedom of speech cuts across all ideological concerns, all other concerns, and that if anybody is denied the right to speak, it threatens the right to speak of everybody.

While the left blathers on about justice, they mete out injustice at every turn. For example, leftists talk a lot about the wealthy paying their fair share, but they talk little about how much of their money the wealthy voluntarily redistribute to projects that likely do a more efficient job of alleviating suffering than would a bloated, inefficient, corrupt government bureaucracy unaccountable to the public whose money they waste.

I, for one, am very glad that Elon Musk had a few billion dollars lying around to spend on a worthy project that will help preserve First Amendment rights that leftists have their deceitful and desperately sick hearts set on destroying.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Musk-v-Leftist-Hatred-of-Free-Speech.mp3

Our Springfield snollygosters are working tenaciously to provide Christian parents with a plethora of reasons to abandon government schools in Illinois. On Thursday afternoon (May 20th), the Illinois Senate took up and debated another “comprehensive” sex education bill (SB 818) that so-called “progressives” and their evil allies–Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and Equality Illinois–are using to indoctrinate children starting in kindergarten.

This bill to corrupt children with leftist humanistic values is sponsored by Illinois State Senator Ram Villivalam (D-Chicago) and passed by a partisan vote of 37 to 18 with four members not voting. It is now up for consideration in the Illinois House, where State Representative Camille Lilly (D-Chicago) is the chief sponsor.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state representative to ask him/her to vote against SB 818. Impressionable students in public schools should not be exposed to body- and soul-destroying messages that promote leftist beliefs about sexuality.

Background

The Illinois Senate debated this controversial legislation for almost an hour on Thursday afternoon. You can watch/listen to the entire debate on the IFI YouTube channel or on our newer Rumble channel. You can also watch the embedded version at the end of this article.

It was encouraging to see five conservative senators rise to question the sponsor and/or criticize the bill. Kudos to Illinois State Senators Sue Rezin (R-Morris), Terri Bryant (R-Murphysboro), Darren Bailey (R-Louisville), Neil Anderson (R-Moline), and Jason Plummer (R-Vandalia) for boldly speaking against this terrible bill.

Regarding the hour-long debate, there are just too many fallacies, outright lies and corrupt intentions to address in one article. Here are just a few of the glaring problems.

State Senator Celina Villanueva (D-Summit), a former sex education teacher, rose to ask the sponsor, “What’s the main goal of this bill?” Senator Villivalam responded:

The main goal is to insure that our youth have the opportunity to be safe and healthy by obtaining and having access to age and developmentally appropriate, medically accurate information and making sure that no one, no one, feels excluded in their classroom. No one feels excluded in their community.

Well, the bill also demands that comprehensive sex education classes be “culturally” appropriate, which the bill defines as follows:

“Culturally appropriate” means affirming culturally diverse individuals, families, and communities in an inclusive, respectful, and effective manner, including materials and instruction that are inclusive of race, ethnicity, language, cultural background, immigration status, religion, disability, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, and sexual behavior.

Culturally diverse and culturally appropriate? This Planned Parenthood legislation is neither inclusive nor respectful of orthodox Jewish, Christian or Muslim families. What families from these faith traditions deem to be “developmentally appropriate” is wildly different from what Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and Equality Illinois celebrate and promote. This point is further illuminated by the floor statement made by State Senator Patricia Van Pelt (D-Chicago):

In my history, before I came here, I was a preacher, and I preached on a regular basis. When I looked at bills like this it was really, really hard for me to get my hands around it, because it was so contrary to what we teach in church. But this is a law this is not a church. And we are representatives of the people in our district. We are not their preachers. We are not their pastors. We are not the ones that’s gonna make them keep the values right or their morals right. 

I learned by being here that many of the things that we held true in the church was actually hurting our community. And I think not having that knowledge not letting those children have the knowledge about what this is [is not good]

…

I’m standing in support of this bill as a new Patricia, not the Patricia that came in here. Because the Patricia that came in here would have had a hard time even voting for it, more less standing up and saying ‘yes, these children need to know what’s happening to them.’

State Senator Van Pelt has been in Springfield since 2013, and by her own testimony, it appears she has been thoroughly corrupted by the Springfield swamp. The “new Patricia,” must have a heart of stone because she has repeatedly ignored the Holy Spirit’s promptings to do what is right. The “new Patricia” no longer has a problem upholding sexually corrupt material being taught to children.

It was also disappointing  to hear State Senator Doris Turner (D-Carlinville) assert that “families come in very different sizes and boxes and no one has the right to define what a family is and what a family should consist of.” As with “marriage,” the God of creation ordained family. It is He who has the right to define what a family is and what it is not.

Senators Van Pelt, Turner and many of their colleagues think that “knowledge” will solve the problems caused by a sexualized culture. State Senator Linda Holmes (D-Aurora) even stated on the floor during debate:

I just don’t understand it, I think what we are doing when we are teaching–again, age-appropriate, medically accurate–sex education to our children, we are arming them with knowledge, and I don’t know when that has ever been a bad thing. 

Maybe Senator Holmes doesn’t remember, or maybe she was never taught the creation story. Genesis 2:15-17 tells us:

Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Knowledge of evil is not a good thing. It leads to death. Comprehensive sex education as proposed by Planned Parenthood, et al. is evil. Exposing young, innocent and impressionable students to Planned Parenthood’s  view of “age appropriate” material normalizes early and high-risk sexual experimentation.

Perhaps the clearest denunciation of this atrocious bill came from State Senator Darren Bailey who rightly said it will put “perversion into our schools.”

I sat here and I listen to this, and I participate in what I expect to be a prestigious body. And here we are dealing with absolute nonsense of putting perversion into our schools. Yeah, that’s what it is, it’s perversion.

Thank God we still have some state lawmakers in Springfield with the moral clarity and backbone to boldly tell the truth about this insidious agenda to undermine and subvert Judeo-Christian values.

You can watch/listen to the entire 57 minutes here:

More info:

The War on Children [VIDEO]

Stop CSE Tools & Resources

Sign the Online Petition

A Plea to Exit Public Schools ASAP

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During the spring General Assembly’s legislative session, Democrat state lawmakers introduced the Repeal the Parental Notice of Abortion Act (HB 1797 and SB 2190). Parents for the Protection of Girls hosted a press conference in opposition to the bill which featured powerful testimony from Laura Lederer, an attorney who’s studied human trafficking for more than 20 years, and Dr. Brook Bello, a pastoral clinical counselor and human trafficking survivor.

The bill would repeal current state law requiring young women under the age of 18 seeking an abortion to notify a parent, legal guardian, or grandparent at least 48 hours prior to the procedure taking place. It was introduced into the Illinois State Senate by Elgie Sims (D-Chicago), and into the Illinois House by Anna Moeller (D-Elgin) with elected House Speaker Emanuel Chris Welch serving as one of the bill’s main co-sponsors.

In Illinois, the The Catholic News Agency reported about 1,000 minors undergo an abortion annually. 

Study makes connections

Laura J. Lederer is the co-author of “The Health Consequences of Sex Trafficking and Their Implications for Identifying Victims in Healthcare Facilities.” The study proves a direct connection between human trafficking, health care providers, and abortion. During the press conference, she laid out key findings from the study that show “because of physical and emotionally abusive situations trafficking victims often seek healthcare providers for abortions, treatments of injuries, or birth control, among other health issues. These encounters with healthcare providers offer a life-saving opportunity for trafficking victims since they are alone with a trained authority who can contact family members or law enforcement on their behalf.”

She shared that 88 percent of the survivors had contact with some kind of healthcare provider while they were being trafficked. Sixty-three percent reported being taken to a hospital emergency room and 57 percent went to a neighborhood or women’s clinic.

According to the study, 71 percent of survivors became pregnant at least once while being trafficked. Twenty-one percent said they became pregnant five times or more, and 55 percent reported having at least one abortion. Thirty percent of trafficking survivors who become pregnant reported undergoing multiple abortions.

Of the women who had abortions, 68 percent were performed at a clinic, 16 percent at hospital, and 14 percent were performed by “other.” Over half of the survivors who had abortions reported they were forced to do so by their trafficker. According to Lederer, some were “beaten around their stomachs or womb” when their traffickers knew they were pregnant.

The bill has the support of the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and Planned Parenthood who claim the judicial bypass process is too tedious and harmful to minorities who may view the process as oppressive. Opponents of the bill have expressed concern that a repeal would offer protection to child molesters, rapists, and human traffickers in Illinois and surrounding states.

Lederer noted that abortion is a polarizing issue, but parental notice should be one both sides of the issue could stand behind. She shared, “Abortion and sex trafficking transcends the usual political boundaries of the abortion debate since it violates both the pro-life belief that abortion takes an innocent life and also the pro-choice ideal of a woman’s freedom to make her own reproductive choices.”

Summing up her report, Lederer expressed sentiments that would seem to outweigh concerns opponents of the Parental Notice Act have expressed, “Illinois’ current law on parental notification of abortion offers a key opportunity to recognize a trafficking victim and to free her from a lifetime of slavery.”

Survivor speaks

Dr. Brook Bello, who was raped at the age of 11, trafficked at 15, and forced to undergo multiple abortions by her trafficker, confirmed Lederer’s statements about parental notification. During the press conference, she shared, “Had my parents been notified, my mother would have been notified what city I was near.” She further implied law enforcement could have been notified and she may have been rescued sooner.

After Bello was rescued, she was plagued by women’s health problems, including fertility issues. She shared how her doctor lamented that she had been slow to speak with him about her past due to the trauma of being trafficked. He told her had he known earlier, “we could have effectively dealt with all of the scar tissue, with all of the issues, and you could have been able to have had children.”

Bello is the founder of More Too Life, an anti-trafficking organization dedicated to mentoring survivors and providing training to recognize and combat human trafficking. Additionally, she’s an author, actress, pastoral counselor, wife, and the recipient of Lifetime Achievement Award from former President Barrack Obama. Having accomplished so much, she shared, “All I ever wanted was to be loved, to be married, to have three children. They’re [her children] in heaven.”

After recounting her traumatic past, she asked, “Why wouldn’t someone, unless it’s an emancipated youth, give that opportunity for that person’s parents to be notified?”

Speaking passionately Bello said, “I ask the public; I ask the Illinois legislators: ‘Why would you want a child to keep something secret that is going to affect her for the rest of her life?’”

She implored, “I beg of you, Illinois. I plead, Illinois, to not reverse, to please notify parents… Give them a safe place to fall and notify parents.”

The current Parental Notice law was passed in 1995 but wasn’t implemented until 2013 after a lengthy series of court battles. In addition to Illinois, 37 other states have some form of a parental notification law.

According to a survey of 600 Illinois registered voters taken March 7-10 by The Tarrance Group, 72 percent of Illinoisans agree or strongly agree that if a minor were seeking an abortion “the law should require her parent or guardian to be notified before the procedure.” Current law does not require minors to obtain an adult’s permission to undergo an abortion procedure, only notification.

When those surveyed were asked, “If a minor is seeking an abortion, do you believe a parent or guardian should be notified?” Just 22 percent replied “no” or “strongly no.”

Take Action: Click HERE to contact your state lawmakers. Let them know that gutting or repealing the Parental Notice of Abortion Act will subvert families and create an environment to protect their minor daughters’ abusers. Ask them to oppose any and all efforts to repeal or amend the law and, instead, uphold parental rights.

Ask your pastor to share this bulletin insert with your congregation.  The body of Christ and people of faith must be notified of this effort and encouraged to speak out now.

Bulletin Insert

Read more:

Man Raped 12-Year-Old 500 Times Resulting in 7 Abortions, Abortion Clinics Never Reported the Crime

Please support the work and ministry of IFI.  

Your tax-deductible donation is greatly appreciated!

We learned this week that the love of money is the root of all evil. Well, we learned that in Scripture. This week purportedly conservative Christian governor of Arkansas Asa Hutchinson just reminded us of it when he sold out children to corporate interests.

For those still basking blithely in the afterglow of America’s once shining light or are socially distancing under a rock, the Arkansas legislature sent a bill to Hutchinson that would 1. prohibit doctors from the risky and experimental use of puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones—some of the effects of which are permanent—for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors, 2. prohibit surgeons from performing mutilating, irreversible cosmetic procedures on minors. and 3. prohibit the use of public funds, including Medicaid, for any of those barbaric, snake oil “treatments.”

The purportedly conservative, purportedly Christian Hutchinson vetoed this commonsense bill to protect children from procedures that are devastating young healthy bodies.

Hutchinson might reflect for a moment on who exactly is cheering his decision. Hint: It’s not conservatives. Oh, no, it’s the “trans”-cult; the “entertainment” industry; the medical industrial complex; the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party (i.e., CNN, NBC, MSNBC, NYTimes, and Washington Post); soulless corporate America; BLM; the ACLU; and the Human Rights Campaign.

Word to Hutchinson: If all the good guys are criticizing you and all the bad guys are cheering you, maybe you made a disastrous decision.

On Tucker Carlson’s Fox News program, Hutchinson defended his decision by appealing to conservative small government commitments—the last refuge of conservative scoundrels who want to embrace “progressive” positions on “social issues.” He also said, the bill “goes too far” because it would stop minors who are already being experimented on from continuing with dangerous “treatments” to conceal their biological sex.

Of course, small or limited government doesn’t mean no government. Nor does it mean abandoning children to the “trans”-cult and the godless profiteers who line their pockets with the lucre gained by chemically sterilizing children and lopping off parts of their sexual anatomy.

Many people, stunned by Hutchinson’s decision and not duped by his small government rationalization, look to corporate pressure as the real reason for Hutchinson’s alignment with the dark side.

In March Hutchinson appeared on another Fox News show and was asked about corporate “pushback” against legislation that promotes sexual sanity. Hutchinson responded,

We’re the home of some major global corporations here in Arkansas, they’re certainly worried about the image of our state.

Immediately after Hutchinson’s veto, left-leaning Tom Walton, whose family owns Walmart, issued this public pat-on-the-back to Hutchinson:

We are alarmed by the string of policy targeting LGBTQ people in Arkansas. This trend is harmful and sends the wrong message to those willing to invest in or visit our state. We support Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s recent veto of discriminatory policy and implore government, business and community leaders to consider the impact of existing and future policy that limits basic freedoms and does not promote inclusiveness in our communities and economy.

Our Founding Fathers would be surprised to learn that our “basic freedoms” include the freedom of children to stop puberty, take cross-sex hormones, and have healthy body parts cut off.

According to the Institute of Southern Studies,

Steuart Walton has been a generous donor to the Arkansas Republican Party as well as to Hutchinson’s campaign.

And Tucker Carlson reported that he “spoke with a source” who said that when the term-limited Hutchinson leaves office in 2022, “he would very much like a board seat” at Walmart.

There are some curious omissions in Hutchinson’s public statements on Fox News about the bill he vetoed.

For example, Hutchinson pointed to the depression and high rates of suicide among gender dysphoric minors. He implied that depression arises from gender dysphoria and can be alleviated by cross-sex hormone-doping. He didn’t seem to know that both depression and gender dysphoria could be symptoms of some other underlying problem. And he didn’t address studies showing that cross-sex hormone-doping can increase suicidal ideation or that suicidal ideation increases after “gender confirmation” butchery.

Hutchinson didn’t address the shocking increase in the number of adolescent girls now identifying as boys. Before the “trans”-cult stopped its slow titration of their ideological poison into the body politic, gender dysphoria affected a minuscule portion of the population and affected mostly boys, beginning between the ages of 3-5. Upwards of 80 percent of those boys eventually desisted from identifying as girls.

Now with the secular world promoting opposite-sex impersonation, particularly via social media, there is an explosion in the number of adolescent girls and young women suddenly identifying as male. As psychologists and sociologists know, girls are much more vulnerable to social contagions, like anorexia, bulimia, cutting, and now cross-sex identification.

Hutchinson didn’t mention the politicization of the professional medical and mental health communities. For example, while “trans”-cultists and their ideological allies like to tout the American Academy of Pediatrics’ endorsement of the medical “transing” of children, they don’t like to mention that the pro-“transing” policy was created and voted on by fewer than 50 members of the now-67,000-member academy.

Hutchinson didn’t mention the increasing number of young women who “detransition” and deeply regret having taken testosterone and/or having had their healthy breasts cut off. These young women with permanently male voices and scarred chests that will never nurse a baby feel betrayed by the medical and mental health communities.

Hutchinson didn’t talk about the health risks from the experimental use of puberty blockers and hormones never tested for long-term cross-sex use, risks that include infertility; liver dysfunction; coronary artery disease; cancer; strokes; osteoporosis; and the development of gallstones, blood clots, hypertension, and pituitary gland tumors.

Hutchinson never talked about the ethics of turning healthy children into lifelong medical patients (You know who likes that? Endocrinologists and pharmaceutical companies, that’s who).

Someone should ask Hutchinson whether his limited government principles would lead him to oppose bans on limb amputations for those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder—a condition in which the sufferer experiences a mismatch between his bodily wholeness and his internal sense of himself as an amputee.

And what about Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), which was banned by the Stop FGM Act of 2020 and signed into law by former President Donald Trump? Would small government Hutchinson oppose a ban on the excision of female genitalia from a 14-year-old girl who, for religious or cultural reasons, wants her genitalia mutilated?

While leftists, practiced at the art of deception and the skill of Newspeak, describe the slicing off of female genitalia as “mutilation,” they describe the slicing off of breasts as “gender affirmation care.”

Since girls as young as 13 are having double mastectomies, a 2015 article by Derrick Diaz and published in the DePaul University Journal of Healthcare Law about cosmetic surgery for minors may offer some helpful insights:

Minors should not have access to cosmetic surgery unless found by a court to be medically necessary. … [I]f medical necessity has not been shown, then the service should be prohibited the same as any regulated service or product prohibited to minors.

…

[A] medical necessity determination can be made through a four-pronged analysis. First, does the impairment hinder a minor’s normal physical function; and, is the proposed surgery intended to treat a present or future clinically verifiable disease, deformity, or injury? Second, is the physical anomaly (1) objectively tangible, and (2) unusual or relatively common? Third, what is the state of the minor applicant’s psychological health? Fourth, would a reasonable minor in the applicant’s position be hindered from normal functioning by the condition (e.g., avoiding normal childhood/adolescent activities)?

…

[R]egardless of whether continued [legislative] noninterference is sound policy generally speaking, it is absolutely not so with regard to minors, as states have statutory mandates to protect their health and welfare. When it comes to cosmetic surgery on minors, states must have an intervening hand in preventing the potentially harmful effects of caveat emptor.

“Trans”-cultists and their allies try to get around this position by arguing that amputating the healthy, natural breasts of gender-dysphoric minor girls is “medically necessary.” But it’s not, and leftists have no conclusive, researched-based proof that it is.

On March 30, just days before his surprising veto, Hutchinson met with two “trans”-cultists—both men who pretend to be women, including “Evelyn” Rios Stafford, a justice of the peace in Arkansas, who pleaded with Hutchinson to veto the bill.

Did Hutchinson talk to any parents of teen daughters who suddenly started identifying as boys?

Did he talk to any young “detransitioned” women who grieve over their damaged bodies and the betrayal of adults who didn’t stop them?

Did he talk to any of the members of the American College of Pediatricians who oppose experimentation on the healthy bodies of children?

Did he consult with Abigail Shrier, the Wall Street Journal writer who wrote the book Irreversible Damage about the harm being done to adolescent girls?

Has he read any of the articles by historically leftist Jennifer Bilek who has been exposing the “money behind the rapidly growing juggernaut of transgenderism in American culture and beyond,” which she argues, “all leads back to the pharmaceutical and tech giants that now interface with LGBT NGOs which are driving the normalization of a biology-denying ideology.”

There is some good news emerging from Arkansas. The Arkansas legislature overrode Hutchinson’s unconscionable veto.

If Hutchinson’s relationship with God and truth are his first priorities—which they should be—then he should publicly confess his sinful decision and repent. Something tells me, however, that confession and repentance aren’t on his agenda.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to Gov. Hutchinson via his official webpage. You can also call the governor’s office during normal business hours to give him and his administration feedback: (501) 682-2345

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Asa-Hutchinson-Sells-Out-Gender-Dysphoric-Children.mp3

Please support the work and ministry of IFI.  

Your tax-deductible donation is greatly appreciated!

Democrat state lawmakers introduced the Repeal the Parental Notice of Abortion Act (HB 1797 and SB 2190) in the Illinois General Assembly’s spring legislative session. The bill would repeal the current law and allow minor females to obtain abortions without a parent’s or guardian’s knowledge. The group, Parents for the Protection of Girls, recently held a press conference announcing their strong opposition to the repeal.

SB 2190 was introduced by Sen. Elgie Sims (D-Chicago) and HB 1797 by Rep. Anna Moeller (D-Elgin). Newly elected House Speaker Emanuel Chris Welch is one of the bill’s chief co-sponsors. A similar bill was introduced in 2019 and failed.

The Parental Notice of Abortion Law was passed in 1995 but wasn’t implemented until 2013 after lengthy court battles. Thirty-seven other states have some form of a parental notification law.

The law they want to repeal requires young women under the age of 18 seeking an abortion to notify a parent, legal guardian, or grandparent at least 48 hours prior to the abortion. It does not require consent. If for some reason the minor is unable to contact an adult family member, a judicial bypass may be sought. According to a report from The Catholic News Agency, about 1,000 minors in Illinois undergo an abortion each year.

Mary FioRito, of Parents for the Protection of Girls, presented the results of a recent public opinion poll at the start of the press conference. FioRito is an attorney and a Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the deNicola Center for Ethics and Culture. She is also the mother of three teenage girls.

The poll was conducted March 7th-10th of 2021 with 600 registered voters in Illinois by The Tarrance Group. FioRio said the poll found “nearly three-quarters [of Illinoisans] are opposed to repealing the Parental Notice Law.” According to those polled, 72% of overall respondents support the current parental notification requirement. When those surveyed were asked, “’If a minor is seeking an abortion, do you believe a parent or guardian should be notified?,’  she noted only 22% said ‘no’ or ‘strongly no’ to that question.”

In addition, FioRito said the poll found “52% of liberal democrats and pro-choice voters support the parental notification law” with “one-third of the electorate that self-identified as pro-choice” supporting the current law.

A Father and Pastor Speaks Out

Jon Jones, the father of a teenage girl and a worship pastor at Christian Life Center, a multi-cultural, non-denominational church, with campuses in the Chicago suburbs of Tinley Park and Blue Island, spoke for families and the effect a repeal could have on them. Jones stated, “I love my daughter and care very deeply about what goes on in her life. If she were to get pregnant and were to consider an abortion, I would want to know so my wife and I could help her deal with the unexpected situation.”

Jones, an African American, noted the Tarrance opinion poll showed, “Seventy-six percent of minority men and 74% of minority of women support this [current] law. So, it’s clear this law has the support of many across our state and it should not be repealed.”

Jones called parental notification a matter of “common sense” and “supportive of the family, which is the bedrock of society.”

He appealed to legislators to see the seemingly contradictory message a repeal would send. “When our state laws ensure children can’t make their own decisions for accessing tanning beds, tattoos, tobacco use,” Jones said, “it seems unfathomable that the law would allow minors to access abortion without any adult guidance. We know the potential severe physical and emotional consequences associated with abortion.”

The groups pushing for the repeal of Parental Notice are the usual suspects: the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and Planned Parenthood. They claim minor girls may be prevented from having an abortion if their parents find out. They also claim that minorities may fear the judicial bypass process due to racial prejudice if parents are not available. While opponents of the bill have expressed grave concerns that a repeal would protect child molesters, rapists, and human traffickers in Illinois and surrounding states, both bills have actually picked up several additional co-sponsors.

Not all minors come from homes with loving parents as some critics of the present law point out. However, Jones said, “I understand not every child comes from a home like ours and the needs of that child must be met as they are in this law with the provided exemptions to notifications. It is also important to weigh the needs of loving families and ensure the government not do more to denigrate them.”

In a March 16th letter opposing the repeal, Catholic Bishops of Illinois alluded to the same arguments from supporters of the appeal as Jones, saying, “It is unfortunately true that not all young people come from loving homes.” They also noted the judicial bypass process can be “emotionally difficult.”

“However, such difficulty must be weighed against the harm done when our laws effectively undermine family life by separating children from the care of parents who love them the most,” said their letter. “The state should do everything to support families, not destabilize them.”

The bishops also expressed the concerns of those who oppose the repeal. “If a minor girl can be taken by any adult man to an abortion clinic in the hopes of erasing the evidence of his abuse, what protection exists outside of the girl’s parent or guardian being informed? Why would we want to create such a dangerous environment?”

HB 1797 has passed through the Illinois House of Representatives’ Human Services Committee and is awaiting debate and a vote in the House.

Take Action: Click HERE to contact your state lawmakers. Let them know that gutting or repealing the Parental Notice of Abortion Act will subvert families and create an environment to protect their minor daughters’ abusers. Ask them to oppose any and all efforts to repeal or amend the law and, instead, uphold parental rights.

Ask your pastor to share this bulletin insert with your congregation.  The body of Christ and people of faith must be notified of this effort and encouraged to speak out now.

Bulletin Insert

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Your tax-deductible donation is greatly appreciated!

Because the “Equality” Act will erase the category of human formerly known as “women,” it has managed to do the seemingly impossible. It has united conservatives and liberals. While Democrat supporters of the Equality Act, including President Biden, have exacerbated political division, conservatives, feminists, and homosexuals are uniting to defeat this bill, which they recognize as a threat to girls and women.

Earlier this week Tucker Carlson interviewed feminist attorney Kara Dansky, chair of the Committee on Law and Legislation for the Women’s Human Rights Campaign, board member of the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), and former senior counsel with the ACLU on the Equality Act. She rightly describes the increasing erasure of women as an “emergency” with many unforeseen consequences that will affect the “rights, privacy, and safety of women and girls.” She warns that the Equality Act, which will “redefine the word ‘sex” to include the nebulous, ill-defined, un-understood, made-up lie that is “gender-identity,” makes a national conversation about these serious consequences imperative.

IFI recommends taking 4 ½ minutes to watch and/or listen to this video interview with Ms. Dansky.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.”

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.

Regardless of what black Americans think, the police departments that protect and serve their communities should be defunded immediately. At least that is the latest propaganda being peddled in a bizarre new campaign by the far-left American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a radical organization literally founded by members of the Communist Party USA.

According to the ACLU’s new campaign, American police are and always have been racist yahoos brutally oppressing minority communities. Reforms, investigations, firings, and other policy changes will not suffice. Instead, America’s thousands of local police departments must be defunded as soon as possible, with the “savings” being “invested” into priorities established by the ACLU.

In a series of videos purporting to document the last “100 years of history” surrounding policing in America, the far-left group argues that “policing still acts as an occupying force in communities of color.” And so, instead of public funding for police to investigate, punish, and prevent crime, that money should go to “black and brown communities,” the organization said.

A petition that goes with the campaign, which has been signed by almost 150,000 people as of this writing, displays hatred and dishonesty toward America’s police officers — many of whom put their lives on the line to protect their communities. And yet, from the ACLU’s rhetoric, American cops might as well be a pack of wild invaders led by Genghis Khan.

“The policing institutions in our country are deeply entrenched in racism and brutality, and we cannot allow it to continue,” the petition reads. “These inherently systemic issues require immediate and permanent solutions. That requires a bold reimagining of the role police play in our society: It is time to divest from law enforcement and reinvest in the Black and Brown communities [sic] they unjustly target.”

As usual, “defunding police” hysteria by guilt-ridden white liberals and agenda-driven hate-mongers such as those running the ACLU is portrayed as merely a benevolent effort to “help” black people who supposedly cannot help themselves. The narrative is very much akin to liberal campaigns to “save the whales” or “save the baby seals.”

Ironically, though, polling data show that black Americans are overwhelming against defunding the police departments that protect their communities from violent criminals. In fact, according to a Gallup survey released in August 2020 — right at the height of the media and “Black Lives Matter” demonization campaign against supposedly “racist” police — more than eight in ten black Americans wanted the same or a greater police presence.

In short, despite its supposed devotion to “democracy,” the ACLU’s radical agenda to defund police would require ignoring the wishes of the very black Americans it pretends to be concerned about. In fact, the scheme would require that a tiny, fringe minority of radicals be allowed to impose unpopular policy on the rest of the community using undemocratic means.

The ACLU’s “sweeping three-part formula” includes, among other elements, handcuffing the police, “prohibiting” them from enforcing laws against crimes that the ACLU determines are “non-dangerous” using fines or arrest. The money saved by eviscerating police will be “reinvested” into unspecified “alternatives to policing” that will supposedly help communities “thrive.”

Finally, for those “rare instances in which police officers do interact with community members” under the new policing regime, the ACLU proposes to implement “common-sense, iron-clad legal constraints” against police and “protections” for those law-enforcement interacts with. Of course, the U.S. Constitution and all 50 state constitutions already contain such protections.

To advance its dangerous anti-police narrative, the ACLU uses deception, lies, and half-truths. The very first video is based on a fraudulent narrative, painting Rodney King — a wife beater who pleaded guilty to armed robbery — as an innocent victim of racist cops. The fact that he charged at police while intoxicated after a dangerous high-speed chase reaching almost 120 mph is never mentioned.

Even the quote from the official LA commission report about the incident is used in a deceptive manner. When the narrator cited the commission’s mention of “racism and bias within the Los Angeles Police Department,” he failed mention that it was based on a survey that found just one fourth of officers in the department thought racism or bias existed at all in the department. In other words, more than 75 percent of officers did not believe racism existed.

But this was never about racism. The communist movement in the United States — backed for generations by the mass-murdering regime enslaving the Soviet Union — has been waging war on American police for almost a century now. In fact, in an official 1961 report headlined “Communist Plot Against the Free World Police,” the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate outlined the nature of the threat.

Among other concerns, it was revealed that communist agents across the West were working to undermine local police so that law-enforcement could be nationalized and federalized. Communists directed by Soviet intelligence had a special focus on the United States. The Judiciary Committee also detailed some of the methods, including formation of mobs to attack police and then demonizing the officers.

Considering the history of the ACLU, its latest salvo in its war on America’s police should come as no surprise. Among the charter members of the ACLU at its founding were numerous senior Communist Party officials including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Louis Budenz, and even eventual Communist Party USA General-Secretary William Z. Foster.

ACLU Executive Director Roger Baldwin, who led the group from 1920 to 1950 and visited the USSR twice, was proud of his communist leanings. “I am for socialism,” he famously wrote. “I seek social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and sole control by those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal…. I don’t regret being part of the communist tactic. I knew what I was doing. I was not an innocent liberal.”

American officials have known this for decades. In 1948, the California Senate Fact Finding Committee on Un-American Activities released a report on it. “The ACLU may be definitely classified as a Communist front or transmission belt organization,” the committee said on page 107 of its 1948 report. “At least 90 percent of its efforts are on behalf of Communists who come in conflict with the law.”

Stripping American communities of their police forces would be a recipe for chaos, especially in minority communities. But the American people, including black Americans, have made it abundantly clear that they are vehemently opposed to such an idiotic plan.

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Mandated Vaccines & the “LGBTQ” Agenda

A troubling trend is occurring in Illinois. It has happened mostly in the background but has become visible with the introduction of two new proposed laws concerning vaccines. If these proposed laws were to take effect, vaccines would be mandated by the state without religious exception. In addition, these bills apply to public and private schools, including Christian private schools and homeschools. Especially egregious would be the mandate for children to receive the HPV vaccine, a vaccine to protect a person from a sexually transmitted disease. Furthermore, and perhaps even more shocking, if this legislation passes, 14-year-olds will be able to receive vaccines without parental consent.

This isn’t the only erosion of parental rights in Illinois. “Progressives” in the Illinois legislature are also seeking to “teach” our children their “good news” on sex. Desiring to mandate a new curriculum on sex and sexuality through two new sex ed bills, there is a concerted push to normalize behaviors and a worldview starting in kindergarten that is anti-Christian. This includes teaching that novel “gender expressions,” pre-marital and non-marital sex, and non-monogamous heterosexual families are moral goods. If these bills become law, your kids will be indoctrinated with a new sexual ethic that is entirely different from that which has been taught for two millennia.

In Illinois, minors can receive an abortion without parental consent with only a judicial waiver. According to the ACLU, no judicial waiver has ever been denied.

If a minor enters into the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), the state will provide “gender transitioning” medical treatment, mental health “LGBTQ” advocacy, and placement in “affirming” households whether or not the parents agree. On their website, DCFS states that every child deserves these “rights,” and that these rights include children not in the DCFS system. For now, the law stops them from imposing their worldview on non-DCFS kids. Unless the state’s expansive powers are stopped, it’s not hard to imagine something that should scare all of us. We are on a trajectory where children will be removed from their parents because the parents will not embrace a child’s decisions on his sexuality or “gender identity.”

There are other examples, but these should suffice to show you what Illinois believes. In a new school guidance report that was ordered by Gov. JB Pritzker, the authors assert that schools have an obligation to act as a parent. DCFS also calls itself a parent, and the judge permitting an abortion without parental consent is acting as a parent. The state of Illinois believes it has a stronger claim to parent your child than you do, but the state of Illinois is wrong.

Biological parents are almost always better situated to parent than the state. In his essay “Of Paternal Power,” John Locke has written the strongest and most enduring Judeo-Christian argument for the preeminence of parental rights in modern society.

Parents have the freedom to raise their children as they see fit because this freedom is from nature and is not a right given by the state. Locke writes that parents have “a power over their children and have as much right to their subjection as those who are in the state of Nature.”

For Locke, Nature is the order of creation, and natural laws flow from this order. One of Nature’s laws is that the couple who births a child is a “temporary government” for that child. In other words, in the same way an adult is subject to civil authorities, a child is subject to his parents while he is a minor. The state of Illinois is usurping one of the most fundamental relationships in human society. Its intervention is about the indoctrination of children with a leftist worldview that stands diametrically opposed to a Judeo-Christian worldview. In a state that has more corruption than it does farmland, the last responsibility it should have is the right to indoctrinate our children.

According to Locke, this “temporary government” is built upon parental obligations. The parents have freedom in raising their child because at the end of the day it is their responsibility to do so. Locke writes,

The power, then, that parents have over their children arises from that duty which is incumbent on them, to take care of their offspring during the imperfect state of childhood. To inform the mind, and govern the actions of their yet ignorant nonage, till reason shall take its place and ease them of that trouble … .

This includes the healthcare and education of the child. As a parent, I do not want my children exposed to “LGBTQ” ideology that normalizes what our faith says is sin. Based on science and common sense, “gender” isn’t a personal opinion or a subjective feeling. I will raise my children as the “gender” that is expressed in their sex; this is based on my understanding of gender being a gift from God and a revelation of the image of God in humanity.

My children are vaccinated, but I find it deeply offensive that Illinois would mandate a drug to prevent a sexually transmitted disease. The mandate gives sexual license to my children that I deeply disagree with. These legal mandates are the height of hubris. We must not give away our obligation to parent to the state. If it’s not obvious, Illinois has no idea what it is doing.

In the most serious error of the Illinois parental state, the child is being given adult rights without parental oversight. In what world can a minor be expected to make informed, rational decisions on deeply complex moral and life-changing choices? Locke writes,

Commonwealths themselves take notice of, and allow that there is a time when men are to begin to act like free men, and therefore, till that time, require not oaths of fealty or allegiance, or other public owning of, or submission to, the government of their countries.

Children are not required to act as adults because they are not adults. Children need parents. This is because, according to Locke, they are in the period of “ignorant nonage.” Parents make the decisions “till reason shall take its place and ease them of that trouble.”

The idea that the state would empower kids to decide on invasive medical procedures or embrace novel sexual expressions reveals a society collectively jumping off a cliff. By the very fact of being a child, they lack mature rationality and the ability to understand the effects of decisions, and they have an underdeveloped moral system. When the state intervenes, it interjects its opinions on life, sexuality, and marriage that are radically contradictory to a Christian view of the world. Such interventions are outrageous.

Dear parents in Illinois, please take notice of what is happening. Call your state lawmakers and Governor Pritzker to stop the two pieces of legislation concerning vaccines and the sex education legislation. Then, it’s time to take back parental rights. Our children are our responsibility. Their future, their faith and their well-being are dependent on us pushing back the intrusions of the state. It’s time for parents to fight for our children. Right now, the state is fighting harder for them.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state senator and state representative to ask them to vote against these bills: SB 3788, HB 4870 and HB 5012. Impressionable students in public schools should not be exposed to body- and soul-destroying messages that promote leftist beliefs about sexuality.

THIS SATURDAY! IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.

It’s official. Illinois is the now the most pernicious state in the country. Governor Jay “Baby Butchery Booster” Pritzker signed into law the Kill-Babies-Bill—euphemistically named the Reproductive Health Act—which has nothing to do with reproducing and nothing to do with health. Instead it enshrines in law that the smallest, weakest, most vulnerable humans have no legal rights and that larger, stronger, arrogant people have an absolute right to kill them. Illinois is now the nation’s bloody altar on which babies are sacrificed to the god of Autonomy that America worships.

At an obscene press conference/celebration of his signing into law the Kill-Babies-Bill, Pritzker thanked Illinois’ most morally repugnant lawmakers (which is saying a LOT), State Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) and State Sen. Melinda Bush (D-Grayslake), along with Planned Parenthood, Personal PAC, and the ACLU of Illinois as “true champions” for “women’s reproductive health.” Oddly, Pritzker didn’t mention the female humans (aka girls) who will never grow into women because Cassidy, Pritzker, Bush, and their accomplices signed their death warrants.

Equally repugnant were the cheers and applause from the sycophantic crowd standing behind Butchery-Booster Pritzker. Lest anyone think the term “butchery” is hyperbolic, remember that he, Cassidy, and Bush are rejoicing over the legal right of women to off their full-term babies, which means injecting their hearts with digoxin to induce heart failure, or sucking out their brains and crushing their skulls, or dismembering them. Butchery is perhaps too genteel a term.

Pritzker, Cassidy, and Bush prefer calling butchery “health care.” But neither their deceitful use of euphemistic language nor, to quote Shakespeare, “all the water in the ocean” can wash the blood from their hands. Instead, their “hands will stain the seas scarlet, turning the green waters red.”

One of Pritzker’s many applause lines was “Abortion bans don’t ban abortion. They just endanger women.” Surely, he’s not that stupid. Abortion bans do, indeed, ban abortion. They don’t end it. And murder, theft, and sexual assault bans don’t end murder, theft, or sexual assaults. But legal bans on abortion would deter abortion and reduce the number of humans slaughtered in the womb.

In an embarrassing attempt to channel John F. Kennedy who in his famous inaugural address said “Let the word go forth from this time and place,” a prideful, presumptuous Pritzker proclaimed:

Let the word go forth today from this place, if you believe in standing up for women’s fundamental rights, Illinois is a beacon of hope in the heart of this nation.

Illinois has not for many decades been a beacon of hope for the heart of the nation. Whatever flickering light remained in Illinois has now been snuffed out by Pritzker, Cassidy, Bush et al just like the babies who will be. Illinois is now a human slaughterhouse at the heart of the nation. Illinois “progressives” have turned the Land of Lincoln into a fiscal and moral mess that Pritzker’s soaring plagiarized rhetoric only illuminates. (BTW, don’t pink-hatted, “nasty,” shouting women say men aren’t permitted to opine on abortion?)

Following Pritzker came the nemesis of decency and truth, Kelly Cassidy, who with no sense of irony but lots of fake-almost-tears, declared,

There is a war against women, a war on bodily autonomy, and our opponents are using hateful, untrue, and outright misogynist rhetoric which escalates daily and endangers women everywhere.

For the umpteenth time to a party increasingly at odds with both morality and science, when women become pregnant there are two bodies—not one. If the “right to bodily autonomy” (whatever that means) comes into direct conflict with another human’s right to live, it should be obvious to all that the right to live is a right of a higher moral order than the “right to bodily autonomy.” All other rights derive from and depend on the most basic right, the right to live.

It is Pritzker, Cassidy, and Bush who endanger the greatest number of humans—including female humans. By “1965, the number of deaths due to illegal abortion had fallen to just under 200,” and in “1972 (the year before abortion was federally legalized), a total of 24 women died from causes known to be associated with legal abortions, and 39 died as a result of known illegal abortions.” Compare those numbers of tragic accidental deaths to the intentional slaughter of 61,000,000 humans in the womb in the United States since 1973 or the 426, 492 humans killed in the womb so far in 2019—including 5,544 killings after 21 weeks gestation.

The Senate sponsor of the Kill-Babies-Bill, Melinda Bush, proved herself as foolish as Cassidy and Pritzker saying,

We believe that women should have the same autonomy over their bodies that men do.

Bush paused waiting for a beat for adulatory applause for that curious notion. No worries, her henchwomen/handmaidens picked up her cue and dutifully obliged, tepidly clapping for, I guess, men’s right to abortion.

I will close with these words from JKF’s inaugural address—words that Pritzker chose not to plagiarize:

[T]he same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe–the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God…. Let both sides join in creating a new endeavor, not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure…. ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice…. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/AbortionCheers.mp3

IFI Banquet Speaker Announced!
We are excited to announce that at this year’s IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st.

Learn more HERE.

I wrote this last Friday:

Regressives got a pledge from the thoroughly corrupt Mike Madigan, who rules Madiganistan with a blood-stained fist, to speedily advance Cassidy’s radical abortion bill by any unethical means possible, preventing due deliberation and preventing those who seek to defend life a chance to marshal their forces against it.

When I wrote those words, I had no idea how low Madigan and State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) would stoop in their unholy quest to make Illinois the Land of Liquidation—baby liquidation, that is.

On Sunday night during Memorial Day weekend when most Illinoisans took time to honor the men and women who have sacrificed their comfort, time, safety, and lives to secure our freedom, Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan (D-Chicago) revealed again the fetid rot that has devoured him and much of the Illinois General Assembly. He suddenly scheduled a meeting of the Appropriations-Human Services Committee to vote on Cassidy’s loathsome Kill-Babies-Bill—deceptively named the “Reproductive Health Act”—with only one hour’s notice. This bill will, among other things, legalize human slaughter throughout the whole nine months of pregnancy (It repeals the partial-birth abortion ban) for any reason—including sex selection—and encode in law the repugnant notion that unborn humans have zero rights.

Early Tuesday afternoon, the Illinois House passed Cassidy’s Kill-Babies-Bill by a vote of 64-50 (with four voting present). It now moves to the Illinois Senate, which has a greater percentage of liberals. (See roll call graphic below.)

Here are some of the stinking rotten details of the egregious violation of public trust that took place Sunday night and of which many Illinoisans may be unaware:

• Cassidy introduced her original Kill-Babies-Bill (HB 2495) on February 13 but it never received even a hearing, so she tweaked it a bit to make it more offensive to the consciences of decent people, including specifically denying that humans in the womb have any legal rights.

• On Sunday, May 26, Cassidy and her accomplices then gutted a different bill (i.e., The Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Code: SB 25) that had already moved through the first three of the five steps of the legislative process, replacing it with her Kill-Babies-Bill as an amendment to the now-gutted bill. This enables Cassidy’s bill to circumvent the regular lawmaking process before the legislative session ends on May 31.

• Madigan’s House rules require a minimum of one hour’s notice between the posting of a bill and its hearing and vote in committee. Cassidy and her accomplices posted the new 126-page “amendment” at 6:08 p.m. on Sunday night during a holiday weekend and scheduled the hearing at 7:08 p.m., thereby preventing opponents from attending and speaking out against it. The “suddenness” of the meeting explains why Cassidy had an ACLU attorney present with a polished 4-minute disquisition and an abortionist with a 5-minute presentation while opponent speakers Ralph Rivera representing Illinois Right to Life Action and Zachary Wichmann representing the Catholic Conference of Illinois were able to make only extemporaneous comments.

• At the beginning of the meeting, committee members were given a thick packet of letters from only proponents of the Kill-Babies-Bill.

• The spanking new Kill-Babies-Bill/amendment was assigned to the House Appropriations-Human Services Committee—chaired by State Representative Robyn Gabel (D-Chicago), who is a former training coordinator for Planned Parenthood. The bill did not belong in this committee because it contained no appropriations. It was assigned to that committee because that’s the committee where it was assured to pass.

In an inspiring, must-see statement, State Representative Tom Demmer (R-Dixon) succinctly addressed the violations of the public’s trust and the spirit of laws intended to increase the transparency of the lawmaking process that took place Sunday night. Please watch Rep. Demmer in this short video.

Far-left freshman State Representative Bob Morgan (D-Deerfield) tried futilely to dismiss the ethical implications of what Madigan did in calling this hearing by saying the Reproductive Health Act has been out for months, so constituents had plenty of time to make their voices heard.

Yeah, riiight.  Nothing to see there. Pay no attention to Madigan hiding behind the curtain. It’s completely unimportant that Leftists gutted an existing bill to substitute in Cassidy’s radical and pernicious Kill-Babies-Bill. And it’s completely unimportant that the hearing was suddenly scheduled on Sunday night during a holiday weekend. And it’s completely unimportant that Cassidy’s 126-page “amendment” was posted the minimum amount of time required by law (one-hour) before a hearing commences making it impossible for constituents or experts to show up to testify in opposition to this proposal.

State Representative Tony McCombie (R-Savanna)—a woman—responded that the issue wasn’t whether constituents had sufficient time to express their views to their lawmakers. The issue was that because of Madigan’s decision to suddenly call the committee meeting on Sunday night on a holiday weekend with only one hour’s notice, Illinoisans were denied the opportunity to express their views at the committee hearing. Unlike the ACLU attorney and abortionist, Rivera and Wichmann were denied the opportunity to develop and present polished presentations.

Another hero of the evening was State Representative Darren Bailey (R-Louisville) who asked how many of the 39,832 abortions performed in Illinois in 2017 were “medically necessary” to preserve the health or life of pregnant women—which are the reasons emphasized by abortion-shouters to justify the slaughter of humans in the womb. (Watch the video here.)

Cassidy admitted she has no idea because the state does not collect such information. Of course, it’s a moot issue, since allowing abortion to protect the “health” of the mother is so wildly expansive that it includes any and no reason.

In an effort to silence Bailey, Cassidy demonstrated—again—how manipulative and deceitful she is, saying in an increasingly hostile and aggressive tone,

I will tell you that my abortion was medically necessary. It saved my life. It preserved my fertility. It allowed for the creation of my family, my children who are my world.

Cassidy knew that no white man in this anti-white, anti-male climate would dare ask any follow-up questions following her faux-indignant and irrelevant “revelation.”

Here’s what Cassidy didn’t say in her exploitative and misleading response but has said publicly to the Chicago Sun-Times. Her “abortion” followed fertility treatments that resulted in a “blighted ovum” implanted in her uterus and in an ectopic pregnancy, which is when a fertilized egg implants in a fallopian tube rather than the uterus. The termination of an ectopic pregnancy is not referred to as an abortion, and with a blighted ovum, there is no embryo, so her personal story is irrelevant.

As McCombie was graciously expressing her sympathy for Cassidy’s experience, Cassidy, oozing open hostility at the lawmaker’s compassion, interrupted her to say, “I’m not sorry. I’m deeply grateful that that option was available.”

We’re all grateful that women can have ectopic pregnancies terminated—which need not involve the intentional killing of a fetus—and we’re all grateful that anembryonic (i.e., no embryo) blighted ova can be removed via a D & C, but women would have those ethical options even if abortion were banned.

Perhaps Cassidy would compromise with Republicans and agree to limit the termination of pregnancies to ectopic pregnancies and the removal of blighted ova—or as she referred to hers, “abortions.” Ectopic pregnancies account for 1-2% of pregnancies and 93% of that 1-2% result in miscarriages, so such a compromise would reduce the number of humans killed in the womb by a LOT.

Bailey—who urged a “NO” vote on what he rightly called “this disgusting bill”—noticed something odd in the changes Cassidy made to her Kill-Babies-Bill, something that exposes Cassidy’s anti-science/anti-reality ignorance. He asked her why she replaced the word “woman” with “individual” when referring to those seeking an abortion. Cassidy, obviously in thrall to the science-denying “trans” ideology, defiantly refused to answer Bailey’s easy-peasy questions:

Bailey: We’ve changed “woman” to “individual.” Who else can get pregnant besides a woman?

Cassidy (answering stiffly): Anyone with a uterus and ovaries can become pregnant.

Bailey: So, someone other than a woman can get pregnant?

Cassidy: Anyone with a uterus and ovaries can become pregnant.

Bailey: Does anyone other than a woman have a uterus?

Cassidy: Anyone with a uterus and ovaries can become pregnant. (Watch the video here.)

It’s a good thing Cassidy-the-Stepford-lawmaker who robotically repeated the “trans” mantra isn’t also a biology teacher.

Cassidy said, “These efforts [to outlaw abortion] have the greatest impact on the most vulnerable populations.” Say what? Was Cassidy about to express her concern for “fetuses” with Down Syndrome? Was she about to express her concern for babies aborted because their mothers don’t like their sex? Was she about to express her concern for black babies who are being targeted by Planned Parenthood?

Nope. No compassion for those vulnerable populations from Cassidy. Her concern was purportedly for “women of color and the poor.” Of course, everyone knows Cassidy’s central concern is about preserving the legal right of women to hire people to kill their offspring, whether those women are poor women of color or wealthy, colorless women.

Please take the time to watch State Representative Avery Bourne (R-Raymond) in this short video, as well as this short video of State Representative Terri Bryant (R-Murphysboro) who spoke out boldly in committee. Illinois desperately needs more lawmakers like Demmer, Bailey, Bourne, McCombie, and Bryant.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to your state senator, state representative and to Gov. JB Pritzker. Urge them to stop targeting innocent pre-born children and vulnerable women in Illinois. Ask them to vote against the grotesquely misnamed “Reproductive Health Act.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/SB-25-House.mp3

SB 25 Roll Call

Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, and Personal PAC have joined forces, once again, to eradicate any and all limits on killing babies in Illinois, absurdly claiming that Illinois’ parental notice law is “dangerous” and “unnecessary.”

The push comes from Governor JB Pritzker’s office and has materialized in the form of two bills. In a press conference, State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago), chief sponsor in the Illinois House for the grossly misnamed Reproductive Health Act (HB 2495), stated, “We know that there is a movement today to limit access to reproductive health care. We want to reflect our values in Illinois and trust women.”

Well, she got one thing tacitly right. Those who wield power in Illinois have barbaric “values” that include utter disregard for the bodily integrity, dignity and sanctity of humans in the womb.

In fear of Roe v. Wade being overturned, they will do everything in their power to preserve the non-existent moral “right” to slaughter inconvenient and imperfect humans in Illinois. According to speakers at the February 12th press conference, their bills will do the following:

• Repeal the Illinois Abortion Law of 1975 including criminal penalties on doctors who commit abortion

• Repeal the Partial Birth Abortion ban, which allows babies to be killed up to the time of birth

• Remove any and all regulations on clinics that commit abortion

• Repeal the Parental Notification Act of 1995

State Representative Emanuel Chris Welch (D-Westchester) is the chief sponsor of the HB 2467, a proposal to repeal the Parental Notice of Abortion Act of 1995. This law only requires notification—not consent. But pro-abortion advocates don’t want anything—not even parents—to hinder a child’s ability to have her baby killed. Liz Higgins, Planned Parenthood Associate Medical Director, stated, “Planned Parenthood and our partners are not going to let this become a country where people can no longer access abortion.” This includes our daughters. The government is once again interfering in familial relationships in order to advance Leftist “values.”

This must be stopped. Planned Parenthood and the ACLU will stop at nothing to achieve their body-and soul-destroying goals. If we fail to do everything in our power to block the passage of these bills, we become complicit in the destruction of countless more innocent lives.

How much longer will God stay his wrath on this state for shedding innocent blood?

Take ACTION:  Please speak out!  Click HERE to send a message to your state senator, state representative and to Gov. Pritzker. Ask them to stop targeting innocent pre-born children and vulnerable women in Illinois. Ask them to vote against HB 2495 and HB 2467.

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.

In Alabama, voters gave their stamp of approval to Amendment 2 – a result that pleased Eric Johnston, president of the Alabama Pro-Life Coalition.

“The amendment [approved by voters] is a statement of public policy that basically says the unborn child is a person within the meaning of the Alabama Constitution, and as such is entitled to all the rights and protections of a person in the Constitution,” he explains. “It’s just a statement by 59 percent of the people in the state of Alabama that they support life.”

Those results mean the amendment will be in place if Roe is overturned by the nation’s high court – a court that now has a conservative slant because of the two justices appointed by President Donald Trump and confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Johnston also notes a decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld as unconstitutional Alabama’s dismemberment abortion ban. “The judges who wrote that opinion both spoke out and said they were only doing this because Roe required them to do it. They did not agree with it,” he points out. “That’s significant when senior intermediate appellate court judges disagree with Roe. So it’s the precedent of the land right now – but precedents can always be changed.”

According to Johnston, it’s an issue that will not go away. Several cases are making their way to the U.S. Supreme Court that could alter or abolish Roe if the court agrees to hear them.

Meanwhile, in West Virginia the usual opponents of anything pro-life went down in flames on Tuesday.

WV advocates for life chime in

The West Virginia Supreme Court issued an edict 25 years ago that the state constitution required the state to use tax dollars to pay for abortions. That issue was on the ballot this week – and voters chose in favor of a constitutional amendment overturning that decision.

Dr. Wanda Franz of West Virginians for Life explains a second aspect of the amendment. “It says that the constitution does not include abortion,” she tells OneNewsNow. “What we were trying to do was to simply neutralize the constitution so that it says nothing in the constitution secures or protects a right to abortion.”

The organizations vigorously opposing passage were the usual suspects, says Franz.

“The ACLU was the primary group that was involved here in the state,” she shares. “And the coalition that was made up of Planned Parenthood and the local-state NARAL – and a number of other groups were part of that coalition – they were based out of the ACLU’s offices.”

Those groups argued that passage of the amendment would mean the state could ban abortion, a false statement outside the realm of legal possibility; and would make it more difficult to legally challenge pro-life bills passed by the legislature and signed into law.

This article was originally published at OneNewsNow.com

The three cases dealt with quite different issues.

In National Institute of Family Life Advocates v. Becerra, a 5-4 majority of the court overturned a California statute that required anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers to inform clients where they could obtain free or inexpensive abortions — something the centers regard as homicide.

The same 5-4 majority in a second case, Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, reversed a 41-year-old precedent and ruled that public employees don’t have to pay unions fees that cover the cost of collective bargaining. Echoing a position taken by then-President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s, the court reasoned that collective bargaining with a public employer is inevitably a political matter, and that forcing employees to finance it is compelling them to subsidize political speech with which they disagree.

In the third case, Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the court avoided a direct decision on whether a baker, whose Christian belief opposed same-sex marriage, could refuse to design a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple, contrary to a state law that bars discrimination against gays. Seven justices ruled that the commission showed an impermissible animus against religion, but the four liberal justices endorsed a separate opinion indicating they’d rule against the baker otherwise.

Rational arguments can now be made for the dissenters’ positions. In Becerra, they argued that the law simply prevented misleading advertising; in Janus, they argued that union members should pay for services rendered; in Masterpiece Cakeshop, they argued that selling a cake is a routine service, not a form of expression. You may not agree, but you can see why others might make these arguments.

But are they “liberal”? That word comes from a Latin root that means “free.”

And “free” is the keyword in the First Amendment to the Constitution, which bars Congress from passing laws “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion or “abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.”

The Supreme Court First Amendment jurisprudence got its start almost exactly 100 years ago, in cases challenging laws passed by a Democratic Congress and endorsed by a Democratic administration, prohibiting opposition to the government and, specifically, American participation in World War I.

The justices hesitated to block such prosecutions, but those considered “liberal” — Republican appointee Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and Democratic appointee Justice Louis Brandeis — were most likely to look askance. The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 to defend the free speech rights of everyone, even vile extremists.

Unhappily, the ACLU today subordinates free speech to other values, like defending the sensibilities of certain students on campuses. And other liberals have been moving in the same direction. It’s less important for them that people say what they think and more important that they say what the government requires.

In his Bagehot blog, the Economist’s Adrian Wooldridge describes the process. Historically, he says, liberals understood that conflict was inevitable and tried to foster freedom based on their distrust of power, faith in progress and belief in civic respect. But today, Wooldridge writes, “liberalism as a philosophy has been captured by a technocratic-managerial-cosmopolitan elite.” They have moved from making “a critique of the existing power structure” to becoming “one of the most powerful elites in history.” In response, we see “a revolt of the provinces against the city”: Brexit, Donald Trump. In counter-response, as Niall Ferguson puts it in a column for The Times of London, “‘liberals’ are increasingly authoritarian.”

Like the “liberal” Supreme Court justices, who don’t see a constitutional problem with compelling crisis pregnancy centers to send messages they find repugnant, or requiring union members to subsidize political speech they disagree with, or forcing people to participate in ceremonies prohibited by their religion.

In the process, they are providing support for Friedrich Hayek‘s argument in “The Road to Serfdom” that moving toward socialism means moving toward authoritarianism. And they seem to not have noticed Yale Law Professor Stephen Carter‘s observation, as quoted in The Atlantic, that “every law is violent” because “Behind every exercise of law stands the sheriff.”

Carter calls for “a degree of humility” in passing and enforcing laws that compel speech against conscience — something today’s “liberals” seem to have forgotten.

Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.

This article originally posted at Creators.com