An Illinois lawmaker wants to ban state employees from traveling to pro-life states on government business.
The Herald-News reports state Rep. Daniel Didech, a pro-abortion Democrat, filed the bill Thursday, claiming pro-life state laws are “very dangerous.”
“What these other states are doing is, to me, very dangerous. To a large extent, yes, abortion is a big part of it, but it’s not entirely about abortion,” Didech said. “As a member of the Legislature, I have the responsibility to protect our state employees.”
His bill, state House Bill 3901, would ban the state from requiring employees to travel to states with laws that ban abortions or require investigations into miscarriages. It also would prohibit the government from paying for any employee trips to these states. However, it includes exceptions for certain types of trips that are deemed necessary.
“This is not like a boycott of those states or anything like that, although in effect, it may look similar,” Didech said. “The purpose of the bill is to protect women who may not be able to get the health care they may need when they’re traveling on official state business.”
Abortion is not health care, though. Earlier this year, leaders of the American College of Pediatricians, American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other medical groups confirmed that intentionally killing an unborn baby is not necessary to protect women’s health.
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“Abortion treats no disease,” they wrote in a letter published at The Public Discourse. “Pregnancy is not a disease, and deliberately killing the unborn child by abortion is not healthcare.”
As the Catholic News Agency reports, 12 states have passed pro-life laws to restrict or ban abortions so far this year. These include heartbeat laws banning abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy in Georgia, Missouri, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Ohio, but none are in effect because of pro-abortion legal challenges.
Meanwhile, Illinois, New York, Vermont and Rhode Island passed radical pro-abortion bills allowing unborn babies to be aborted for basically any reason up to birth.
Robert Gilligan, executive director of the Illinois Catholic Conference, told CNA that Didech’s new bill is “absurd.”
“Where does this thinking begin and end?” Gilligan questioned. “There are states that have weaker gun laws, different speed limits out West, different smoking laws — why don’t we protect our state employees when they travel to other states when they may not have the same laws as Illinois on these issues?”
The city of San Francisco enacted a similar travel ban in July. The ban prohibits employees from taking city-paid trips to Georgia, Louisiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi and Alabama, all of which passed laws this year to protect unborn babies from abortions. It also blocks the city from entering into new contracts with companies in those states.
Los Angeles politicians and the California legislature also passed travel bans to pro-life states earlier this year. In May, Colorado banned state-sponsored employee travel to Alabama because of its law that protects unborn babies by banning all abortions.
