If signed into law by Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner, HB 40, which passed in both the Illinois House and Senate, will force taxpayers to subsidize abortions for women on Medicaid and for women covered by state employee health insurance.

Feticidal maniacs in Illinois—including lawmakers—are desperate to have Rauner sign this bill into law. They reason that since abortion is legal, the public should subsidize it. Leftists believe all Illinois taxpayers should pay for poor women’s and state employees’ choices to have their unborn children killed. Ironically, while Leftists command that men never express an opinion on abortion, Leftists also say male taxpayers should fund abortion. Word to Leftists:

1.) Those tiny humans growing inside women get half their DNA from men.

2.) The issue of whether the product of conception between two humans is a human with rights is a human rights issue—not exclusively a women’s issue.

3.) There are no criteria that Leftists can manufacture to defend the right of some humans to snuff out the lives of other humans that apply only to incipient human lives. Whether those criteria are intrinsic or extrinsic to humans in the womb, they all can be applied to humans who escaped the torture chamber that the womb has become. Intrinsic criteria such as immature development, dependency status, lack of sentience, or lack of perfection apply to humans outside the womb as well. Extrinsic criteria such as being considered a financial or emotional burden also apply to humans outside the womb.

4.) According to Leftists, men can have wombs, menstruate, become pregnant, and give birth, and, therefore, abortion is a men’s issue.

5.) Using the language of “rights,” feticide-defenders are appealing to the respect Americans have for “negative rights”—also known as liberties—(e.g., the right to vote, assemble, exercise one’s religion, and speak freely), which are not accompanied by any obligation for others to subsidize them. But what feticide-defenders are really suggesting—without explicitly saying—is that women have a “positive right” (i.e., an entitlement) to abortion, which imposes a duty on others to subsidize it. Abortion, however, is not an entitlement, and society has no obligation to pay for women to get them. Neither wanting something; nor really, really wanting something; nor experiencing suffering from not obtaining this desperately desired thing means the public has an obligation to provide it.

7.) We, as a benevolent society, have created safety nets to provide for basic health care for those who are unable to provide for it themselves. No matter how many times feticide-defenders call the killing of incipient human life “health care,” it’s not. Killing human fetuses is neither health care nor reproduction. It’s death facilitation and anti-reproduction. If Leftists want to help poor women and state employees kill their offspring, they have the choice and negative right to do so.

In an editorial appearing in Crain’s Chicago Business, K. Sujata, president and CEO of the Chicago Foundation for Women (CFW), frets about the implications of an HB 40 veto. She worries about the economic interests of pregnant women, many of whom choose to have sex when they can’t afford or don’t want to provide for the needs of humans who may result from their choice to have sex:

HB40 also removes restrictions on reproductive health care coverage that put women’s economic security at risk…. In order for women and their families to achieve full economic security, all women in Illinois must be able to make the important decision of when to start or grow their family.

Do Illinoisans really have a moral obligation to provide for the “full economic security” of state employees? Do Illinoisans really have a moral obligation to pay for the destruction of the tiny family members already growing inside of poor women?

And how does killing humans—including female humans—whose lives are just beginning fulfill this core principle of the Chicago Foundation for Women:

We believe that equality is a universal human right, and we uphold respect and dignity as guiding principles in all our work.

If Leftists really believe that more developed, sentient, able-bodied, and cognitively superior humans have the right to exterminate less-developed and cognitively and physically impaired humans whose self-awareness is diminished or absent, then they are kindred spirits with Princeton University bio-unethicist Peter Singer who makes the same argument but applies it to post-natal humans as well. What possible ethical difference do a few days or few inches of birth canal make in terms of the right to kill?

Remember ten years ago when Hillary Clinton expressed her belief that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare. And by rare, I mean rare“? Northwestern University law professor Andrew Koppelman expressed the same sentiment during a forum at Northwestern Law School several years ago. When I asked why abortion should be rare if incipient human life is so devoid of personhood as to be undeserving of even minimal constitutional protection, he had no answer.

If Leftists really wanted abortion to be rare, they wouldn’t be fighting tooth and nail for the passage of HB 40, which, it is estimated, will result in an additional 15,000 abortions each year at taxpayer expense.

But no one actually believes Leftists care about whether abortion is rare or common. To them destroying human fetuses is no different from excising tumors.

Wombs should be sanctuary spaces and no-kill people shelters where all humans are safe. Governor Rauner should kill HB 40.

Take ACTION: Click Here to email Governor Bruce Rauner. Urge him to keep his pledge to veto HB 40. Also, please continue to call the governor’s public comment line every day until this is resolved: (217) 782-0244 and (312) 814-2121. 

You can also send Gov. Rauner a message via Twitter: @GovRauner

Listen to Laurie read this article in this podcast:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2Kill-HB-40-Wombs-Should-Be-Sanctuary-Spaces-and-No-Kill-Shelters.mp3

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Editor’s Note:  This bill could be called for a vote this week in the Illinois Senate. 
Please take a few minutes to contact your state senator today!

In their relentless effort to rob Illinois communities of the right to choose abstinence-based curricula, the Left once again engages in dishonest, exploitative, and incompetent tactics, tactics that should anger anyone who values truth and sound argumentation.

This time “progressive” promoter of contraceptive-centered sex ed (aka “comprehensive” sex ed), K. Sujata, president and CEO of Chicago Foundation for Women, exploits Elizabeth Smart and  her recent comments about Mormon teaching on rape to promote Illinois’ proposed comprehensive sex ed bill.

Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped from her home at 14 years old and repeatedly raped over the course of nine months, recently spoke at a conference on human trafficking at Johns Hopkins University. Smart shared this:

I remember in school one time I had a teacher who was talking about abstinence and she said “Imagine you’re a stick of gum. And when you engage in sex, that’s like getting chewed. And if you do that lots of times you’re going to become an old piece of gum and who’s going to want you after that?”

Note that Smart did not say that this idiotic comment was part of any abstinence curriculum. She stated that one time a teacher had made this statement.

And here is Sujata’s odd rendering of Smart’s comment:

As part of her school curriculum, Smart was taught that if she lost her virginity before marriage, she would be considered worthless, like a “piece of chewed gum.” (emphasis added)

It would be generous to say that Sujata misrepresented Smart’s statement.  A less generous observation suggests she lied for her political purposes.

Smart was discussing how the teachings about rape and virginity in her conservative Mormon community contributed to her feelings of worthlessness after being raped. As evidence, she told an anecdote about one feckless and destructive comment one teacher had made. And let’s not forget that this one comment made by one teacher was made during a discussion of abstinence which comprehensive sex ed curricula discuss too.

So, by Sujata’s logic, lawmakers would be justified in robbing all communities of the right to choose “comprehensive” sex ed curricula if someone could find one idiotic and inappropriate statement made by one teacher of a comprehensive sex ed class.

Sujata made yet another ludicrous, dishonest, and unsubstantiated claim. She stated that “the lesson [Smart] was taught has been repeated in Illinois classrooms.” Say what?

Have reporters bothered to ask Sujata to provide evidence for that wild accusation? Has anyone asked her to provide proof from multiple “Illinois classrooms” that they have taught that girls who lose their “virginity before marriage should be considered worthless, like a ‘piece of chewed gum’”?  

Sujata then, in effect, told Illinois lawmakers that her misrepresentation of Smart’s anecdote should lead them to vote for Illinois’ proposed sex ed bill (HB 2675):

As Illinois lawmakers prepare to vote on comprehensive sex education for Illinois’ youth (House Bill 2675), they should consider the experience of a young woman who was victimized twice — once by a rapist and again by the inaccurate, ideologically driven, abstinence-only doctrine passed off as sex education in her classroom.

Sujata’s assertion that the teacher’s comment was part of an abstinence-only “doctrine” is almost as foolish as the teacher’s comment itself.

Sujata claims that “piles of studies prove these negative messages are just plain ineffective when measured against the goal of discouraging teen sex,” and then she cites one. And what did the one study Sujata cited from among the piles of studies find? According to Sujata:

A 2007 study commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that abstinence-only programs have had “no impact on rates of sexual abstinence.” “Emerging Answers 2007: Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Diseases,” compiled several existing studies and found no strong evidence that abstinence-only-until-marriage programs delay the initiation of sexual intercourse, hasten the return to abstinence or reduce the number of sexual partners.

Here’s what Sujata does not want readers to notice: This study did not prove that comprehensive sex ed is consistently more effective than abstinence-based curricula at reducing STD, STI, or teen pregnancy rates—which are the problems the bill’s sponsors cited as justification for the bill.

In fact, from Sujata’s statement, it doesn’t appear that the study even claimed that abstinence-based curricula are less effective than contraceptive-based ”comprehensive” sex ed at delaying sexual intercourse initiation, hastening the return to abstinence, or reducing the number of sexual partners.

So, if the two types of curricula are roughly equivalent in their effect on abstinence and disease and pregnancy rates, how does the Left justify legally prohibiting only abstinence-based curricula?

It’s important to discuss this issue, but such discussions should be informed by logic, evidence, and truth.  So far, we have Illinois representatives voting for this bill that would legally prohibit a type of curriculum these representatives have never read. We have representatives who voted for this bill without ever seeing any evidence-based research proving conclusively that contraceptive-based “comprehensive” sex ed is consistently more effective at reducing STD, STI, and teen pregnancy rates than abstinence-based curricula. And now we have a promoter of this bill exploiting and misrepresenting the statements of a rape victim in order to get this bill through the Illinois Senate.

Illinoisans from both sides of the aisle should be outraged at the incompetence, ignorance, and dishonesty of those who have promoted and supported this bill.