Anti-abortion groups gathered in downtown Chicago to celebrate the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade decision.
The March for Life, Illinois Right to Life, and attorneys with the Chicago-based Thomas More Society — an anti-abortion law firm that also represented other clients in religious freedom issues including same-sex marriage, embryonic stem cell research, and recent pandemic-related stay-at home orders — held a news conference to laud Friday’s ruling.
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Amy Gehrke, executive director of the anti-abortion group Illinois Right to Life, commended the court “for taking the very, very bold step to allow states to restore protection to preborn babies. Just like in 1954 with Brown v. the Board of Education, we are on the right side of history.”
They predicted Illinois, a Midwestern refuge for abortion services, will become a target of anti-abortion groups as the debate moves to the states.
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Anna Kinskey, associate director of March for Life Chicago, said while children in Missouri, Kentucky and South Dakota “are safe from abortion today” and that other Midwestern states are likely to follow, “in Illinois, Gov. Pritzker continues to lead in the wrong direction.”
“We do fully expect Illinois to be ground zero in the abortion debate,” Gherke said. “I think it is incumbent upon not just our neighboring states that have protective pro-life laws but in states throughout the Midwest and beyond. With Illinois here, there are women and babies still in danger. We’re going to be encouraging people to join us here, to help us win our state for life.”
The group’s immediate focus will be contacting women coming to Illinois to seek abortions from out of state and connecting them with alternatives, and stopping other pro-abortion rights legislation from advancing in the Illinois General Assembly. Longer term, anti-abortion officials said they wanted to see a restoration of the state’s parental notice law that required parents of minors to be informed when their child sought an abortion and new laws requiring clinics providing abortions to be subject to more stringent health inspections.
Illinois Right to Life and its sister organization, Illinois Right to Life Action, will “be letting people know how radical our laws are,” Gehrke continued.
The group has already begun polling on abortion issues and plan to target “a handful of races” where anti-abortion sentiment is high. Gehrke said she would publicize those races after this Tuesday’s primary elections.
“Illinois Right to Life is going to be the tip of the spear, making sure that this happens in our state, that our state does protect the most innocent among us and their mothers,” Gehrke said.
Peter Breen, a former state representative and vice president of the Thomas More Society, said the Dobbs decision opens up significant legal questions.
“Our entire lives, Roe v. Wade has been the law of the land. What is it like when you take what we’d all been told was a constitutional right and a medical procedure, and now in these states, it’s akin to murder. If you’re trying to prevent what you consider to be murder, you have a lot of leeway in terms of what you do to prevent the performance of that act,” he said. “Can Planned Parenthood of Illinois go and bring Iowa residents into Illinois to do something the state of Iowa thinks is murder? That’s going to be a very interesting question for the courts.”
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In a statement, Cardinal Blase Cupich, archbishop of Chicago, welcomed the ruling and “the opportunity it creates for a national conversation on protecting human life in the womb and promoting human dignity at all stages of life. This moment should serve as a turning point in our dialogue about the place an unborn child holds in our nation, about our responsibility to listen to women and support them through pregnancies and after the birth of their children, and about the need to refocus our national priorities to support families, particularly those in need.”
