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| photo credit: Matt Turner / Flickr |
HB 1797 (repealing the Parental Notice of Abortion Act) and the five pro-life bills in the House Human Services Committee are not the only bills Illinois pro-life advocates need to be following.
The five pro-life bills are set to be discussed in the House Human Services Committee on Tuesday, March 16 at 3:00 pm. If you are interested in those bills or would like to file witness slips in support of them, click here.
HB 1797 does not yet have a hearing date set, but Illinoisans can still contact those same legislators on the House Human Services Committee to let them know how important it is that the parental notification law is not repealed.
The Senate Judiciary Committee is meeting on Tuesday, March 16 at 3:00 pm to discuss SB 109. This bill would amend the Health Care Surrogate Act to no longer require a witness to sign the Practitioner Order for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST) form. The POLST form is used when a patient is deciding what kinds of treatments they would approve of when the patient is unable to make decisions. It would also allow a national POLST form to be used instead of the Illinois POLST form. That form similarly does not require a signature from a witness.
Finally, SB 647 and HB 1736, otherwise known as the Reach Act, have been assigned to the Senate Executive Committee and the House Elementary & Secondary Education: School Curriculum & Policies Committee. A hearing date for this legislation in the Senate Executive Committee has not been set, but the House committee is scheduled to have a hearing on this bill on Wednesday, March 17 at 8:30 am. This bill would mandate that public schools teach comprehensive sex education in grades k-12 that neither stigmatizes abortion nor discourages sexual activity at a young age.
