An attempt to repeal Illinois’s parental notification law failed to advance out of committee before the end of the legislative session, leaving Illinois’s 1995 law requiring parental notification before a minor undergoes an abortion intact. The parental notification law is the last remaining restriction on abortion in Illinois after Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a law in 2019 legalizing abortion up until birth for any reason, repealing abortion clinic regulations, and requiring all health insurance plans to cover abortions. That year abortion rates in Illinois increased by 10%.
Like Minnesota, Illinois requires parental notification, but not consent, before a minor undergoes an abortion. The parental notification law is not only the last remaining abortion restriction in Illinois, it is also a policy that has widespread support among parents, including parents who describe themselves as pro-abortion. Removing this law would take away the last protection Illinois offers to the unborn while also attacking parental rights and teens’ relationships with their parents. The Illinois Parental Notification of Abortion Act points out that abortion can lead to long-term medical, emotional, and psychological harm and that it is not in a minor’s best interest to keep their parents in the dark.
Furthermore, without this law, teens who may be in dangerous situations could get abortions without their parents’ knowledge, or be taken to get an abortion by an abuser. When the bill was being considered in committee, Dr. Brook Bello, a sex trafficking survivor, explained to lawmakers that if Illinois’s parental notification law, had been in place when she was in her teens, it could have led to her rescue. Instead, she was taken by the man who was trafficking her for multiple abortions and her abuse continued. “Had my parents been notified, my mother would have known what city I was in,” she told the committee. “She would have known what street I possibly would have been near. She could have contacted law enforcement.”
The abortion industry has consistently failed to provide help and protection to women and girls who have been/are being abused and trafficked and has even been caught aiding people they believed to be pimps. Parental notification laws offer victims of trafficking and abuse the protection that the abortion industry refuses to give them.
Illinois has kept its parental notification law in place for now, but abortion lobbyists are planning to continue their repeal efforts. These efforts are an attack on the last protection for unborn babies in Illinois, an attack on parents’ relationships with their teens, and a failure to protect young women and girls who are being victimized by the sex trafficking industry.
(Image: Flickr, New Voices)
