SPRINGFIELD — Two bills dealing with clinics and physicians who perform abortions passed Tuesday through the Illinois House Agriculture and Conservation Committee.
Opponents of the bill packed the committee room wearing T-shirts that read "Women are not livestock" in response to the bill's assignment to the agriculture committee.
Committee Chairwoman Lisa Dugan, D-Bradley, said the committee doesn't choose which bills to hear, but that the representatives were fully capable of understanding the bill.
House Bill 4117, sponsored by Rep. Thomas Morrison, R-Palatine, would require facilities that perform more than 50 abortions in a year to comply with regulations for ambulatory surgical treatment centers (ASTC).
Illinois law more strictly regulates ASTCs than nonsurgical centers, requiring wider corridors to allow stretchers through in emergencies.
Morrison said his constituents expressed concerns that Illinois doesn't fully regulate abortion clinics.
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) began inspecting Illinois abortion clinics after police arrested a doctor of a late-term abortion clinic in Pennsylvania and charged him with killing the babies after birth, Dawn Behnke, legislative director for the Illinois Federation for Right to Life, told the committee Tuesday.
IDPH permanently closed two abortion clinics in Rockford and Lincolnwood after investigations into the clinics revealed numerous code violations, Behnke said.
Despite the closings, however, IDPH doesn't support the House bill because it requires abortion clinics to comply with "medically unnecessary regulations," said David Carvalho, deputy director for the department.
Different procedures exist at ASTCs from those at Pregnancy Termination Centers (PTC) so they require different regulations, Carvalho said.
Colleen K. Connell, executive director of the ACLU of Illinois, litigated Ragsdale v. Turnock 941 F.2d 501 (1991), which established PTCs and gave them lower regulations than surgical centers.
The ACLU believes passing the bill would force several abortion clinics to shut down, Connell said.
"We are very concerned that if House Bill 4117 were to become law, women would be denied access not only to abortions, but to contraceptives," Connell said.
The bill passed through the committee by a vote of 12-2.
House Bill 4085, sponsored by Rep. Joseph Lyons, D-Chicago, says facilities that perform abortions must offer women the opportunity to view an ultrasound before the procedure occurs. Women can reject the ultrasound in writing, the bill says.
Lyons said he proposed the bill to "put a face to the procedure" and to save "what we perceive to be a life."
Peg Brunk, director of client services at the Women's Center of Chicago, said allowing women considering abortion to see an ultrasound will help fully inform them of their options.
"We feel by withholding the image from the client, you would be denying her access to her own medical records," Brunk said. "She would not be able to fully participate in the decision that is going to be made."
Allison Cowett, an OBGYN and assistant clinical professor in the OBGYN office at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said the bill, if passed, would destroy the doctor-patient relationship.
"My patients know what they are in for when they come for an abortion and they understand what they are doing," Cowett said. "To imply that physicians in Illinois do not fully inform their patients of what they are about to receive when they receive an abortion is frankly very insulting."
The bill passed through the committee by a vote of 11-2.