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Subject: Illinois Tackles
Notification and Born-Alive Infants Bill
Source: Chicago Sun Times; March 23, 2001
Illinois Tackles Notification and Born-Alive Infants Bill
Springfield, IL -- Pro-abortion lawmakers last week employed a rarely used
legislative maneuver that gutted a bill requiring parents to be notified
before their daughters can obtain abortions.
The fight in the Illinois House erupted after a group of pro-abortion
lawmakers effectively rewrote the parental notification legislation without
permission from its lead sponsor, Rep. Terry Parke (R-Hoffman Estates).
Parke's bill originally would have required abortion practitioners to notify
an adult family member of someone 17 or under at least 48 hours before
performing an abortion on them.
But Rep. John Fritchey (D-Chicago), who favors abortion, amended Parke's bill
by broadening the list of those who could be notified to include aunts,
uncles, siblings and clergymen. Pro-life advocates opposed the weakening
measure. The amendment Fritchey drafted was approved by the House by a 61-49
margin, leaving the normally raucous legislative chamber in silence. The
legislation must be voted on again by the House before moving to the Senate.
Parke, who has pushed numerous parental notification bills in the past, said
he plans to call his modified bill for a vote in the House with the
expectation the GOP-led Senate will undo the changes.
The suburban Republican railed against the Fritchey amendment, saying
abortion facilities could easily meet the law's notification requirements by
enlisting clergy members who favor abortion rights. "If you don't think the
abortion industry isn't going to hire clergy to be notified under this
provision, you're mistaken," Parke said. "They'll find some
sympathetic
clergyman that may not even be your priest. Every clinic will have a
clergyman who'll be on staff to send notice to."
Meanwhile, an Illinois state senator is trying to put an end to "live-birth
abortion" -- a move made necessary by the actions of a hospital in his own
district. Specifically, he wants to end the practice of delivering babies
alive, only to let them die without care.
"I work at a hospital that's in Senator O'Malley's own district that aborts
babies alive, and if they're born alive, they leave them to die if the intent
was abortion," said Jill Stanek, a labor and delivery nurse who blew the
whistle on what was happening at her hospital in suburban Chicago.
Stanek said she thought there was a law to protect these tiny infants, but
ultimately discovered there was not. "Hospitals like Christ Hospital
finagle
through cracks in the law and at this point it is, sadly, legal in
Illinois,"
she said.
Penny Pullen, who heads Life Advocacy Resource Project and is a former
Illinois state legislator, said doctors who are intending to perform
abortions generally consider this kind of thing an unpleasant complication.
"Because when the baby comes out alive, what do they do now?" Pullen
said.
"How do they explain to the mother that the baby is living? And so they're
letting them die."
She hopes nurses in other states will come forward as well. "This is
probably going to be discovered to be a loophole in every state," Pullen
said. Both hope that the Illinois bills will become a template for other
states to use.
For more information, contact: Illinois Federation for Right to Life, 1102
Milton Road, Alton, IL 62002-3152, (618) 465-7655
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