People Who Play By the Rules spokesman Mike Koolidge | Provided photo
People Who Play By the Rules spokesman Mike Koolidge | Provided photo
The recent Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has intensified the discussion about abortion at the state level.
According to Chicago Tribune, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker visualizes Illinois as being a state women can turn to for abortions, and on July 1 he asked the Biden administration to increase federal funding to support doctors providing telehealth services.
Although Pritzker's plan for Illinois to be a state women can turn to for abortion access might align with a larger percentage of the population, his stance on when termination is legal does not. According to a Gallup poll conducted in 2018, there is a steep drop off in support of abortion being legal after the second trimester, as 77% of Americans believe that it should be illegal in the final three months.
"J.B. Pritzker has an extreme and ghoulish position on abortion – he supports allowing it to a healthy mother and child all the way up to birth, or even after birth if the parents don’t want their child. That’s infanticide,” People Who Play By the Rules (PBR) spokesman Mike Koolidge said. "This is an extreme and disturbing position and polls show it thankfully represents the views of a very small sliver of our state."
Back in 2019, Pritzker signed the Reproductive Health Care Act allowing women to legally have abortions at any point during their pregnancy, according to The Washington Times.
To say that Pritzker's stance on abortion is not mainstream is true if the defined scope is larger than just Illinois. Depending on the state in the U.S., Illinois specifically, allows abortion at any point during pregnancy and there are only five other countries that allow this, those being Canada, China, Vietnam, North Korea and South Korea, according to the Family Research Council.
Breitbart reports that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has expressed similar views to Pritzker in the past, has now called for the Biden administration to set up Planned Parenthoods on federal land in red states following the Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade.
However, the Biden administration was unable to agree with Warren's call to action to fund abortions on federal land as White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated this idea could have "dangerous ramifications," according to the New York Post.
Illinois GOP nominee for governor Darren Bailey might have an approach considered to be more moderate. "Banning abortion is not a solution, we have got to work together,” Bailey said on WGN 10 Radio in response to a question about his stance on abortion in Illinois and what should be done moving forward.
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