As Election Day approaches, the TV and radio airwaves are saturated with political ads. At a time when most of Illinois is experiencing unprecedented levels of crime and inflation, the political party with the most money to spend is doing everything it can to deflect from these serious issues and drive the political debate toward a sole issue — abortion. Is abortion an important issue? Yes. Is it the only issue? Not by a long shot.
Not only does nearly every political ad focus on this single issue, but also in most cases, we’re seeing the same ad recycled with only the candidates’ names changed. While these ads are effective in ginning up public ire, not one of these ads points out the simple truth that in Illinois, expansive abortion rights are the law of the land. Through legislative action, Illinois prepared for the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned by protecting women’s reproductive rights. Because of laws already on the books. the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision regarding Roe had no effect on Illinois.
None.
In Illinois, we have a law called the Reproductive Health Act, which sets forth fundamental rights for individuals to make autonomous decisions about their reproductive health. The act, passed by the Illinois legislature and signed into law by Gov. J.B. Pritzker in 2019, “restricts the ability of the state to deny, interfere with, or discriminate against these fundamental rights.” The act also expressly states that “a fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent rights under the laws of this state.”
Additionally, in Illinois, an abortion can take place up until fetal viability. Insurance codes also require state-regulated insurance companies to cover the cost of abortions. Illinois takes the process a bit further. In a separate law, the state provides for taxpayer-funded abortions for Illinoisans and out-of-state women who seek an abortion procedure and cannot afford it. Illinois lawmakers also rescinded parental notification for minors seeking an abortion, so now, regardless of age, a girl can receive abortion services in Illinois without a parent or guardian knowing about it.
Yet if you listen to the barrage of campaign ads coming from the political left, they’d have you believing women will no longer have access to these procedures and doctors who perform them will be led out of their clinics in handcuffs and sent to jail. It’s completely untrue.
While the political left has steered the conversation toward the single issue of abortion, candidates are hoping Illinoisans are temporarily asleep at the switch and distracted from other issues that are keeping people up at night and causing many to leave the state. These issues include a significant spike in urban-area crime that has bled into the suburbs; the Jan. 1 implementation of the SAFE-T Act, which will limit who is held in pretrial detention; crushing property taxes, onerous regulations and taxes on businesses; and campaign-gimmick tax relief that will likely evaporate right after the election.
Democrats don’t want to talk about these issues because they own them. Instead of standing by their policy decisions, Democrats have chosen to use an emotionally charged fear campaign as the centerpiece of their candidates’ fall campaigns.
A recent Illinois Broadcasters Association-Research America Inc. poll reports that the No. 1 issue of importance for Illinoisans is not abortion. Fiscal mismanagement, taxes and spending top people’s list of concerns. The poll then lists crime, jobs and the economy, gun control and health care as the next most important issues for Illinois residents. But you won’t hear the Democratic governor or candidates from his party talk about these problems or why they supported bills that created them.
All of us can’t wait until Nov. 9 when the campaign ads disappear. Until then, I would urge all Illinoisans to look beyond the surface of the ads they’re seeing and decide for themselves why candidates from the political left have chosen an issue that has already been resolved in Illinois as the cornerstone of their campaign ads.
State Sen. Don DeWitte of St. Charles represents the 33rd District in Kane and McHenry counties.
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