Access to Family Building Act

 February 28 2024

JB Pritzker

401 S. Spring St.

Springfield, IL 62704

RE: In Support of the Access to Family Building Act

Dear Governor Pritzker,

My name is [Student_Name] and I am currently pursuing my bachelor’s degree in Social Work at the University of Illinois in Springfield. I have been born and raised in Illinois, and I have always felt grateful to be from a state that values women’s reproductive rights, and I appreciate your dedication to ensuring that people can easily receive abortions and reproductive care. Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, women’s reproductive autonomy has been under attack in a plethora of ways. Women across the nation have lost their right to an abortion or have had their access severely limited, many of these bans are enforced through criminal penalties or jail time. The bills that Republican legislators have been proposing are beginning to become ridiculous examples of what we face in this post Roe v. Wade era, such as a recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling that deemed all fertilized embryos to be people. This is causing big problems for In vitro fertilization (or IVF) facilities, as the ruling means damaging or discarding any fertilized egg outside the body could potentially lead to criminal charges. During the IVF process, more eggs than children desired are fertilized in order to increase the chance of success for the fetuses to be viable, so this ruling calls into question what facilities are meant to do with the excess frozen embryos or embryos they know will not be successful. Facilities across the state have come to a standstill in providing services as they try to transport their eggs to surrounding states. Women struggling with infertility are not the only ones being affected by the IVF ruling. There are many women who have potentially terminal illnesses such as cancer who have chosen to freeze their eggs for later use in fear that their medical treatments could cause them to lose their ability to have kids. This ruling puts these frozen embryos into limbo as well because healthcare providers do not want to be legally liable for any damage. 

Tammy Duckworth, in conjunction with Patty Murrary, the Chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, and U.S. state representative, Susan Wild, has proposed a bill known as the Access to Family Building Act which would provide federal IVF protections nationwide and override any state rulings like the one in Alabama. Duckworth proposed this bill in 2022, but it was blocked by Republicans at that time. She is reintroducing it for a vote now because of the attention that IVF rights are getting, due to the halting of treatment in some states. The Access to Family Building Act would add protections to those who choose to undergo IVF or donate genetic material and for the health care professionals that work in fertility facilities. Tammy herself is open about how she used IVF to have her daughters. She understands on a personal level how IVF services help families struggling with infertility, have the children that they’ve always dreamed of. 

Unlike much of the anti-choice legislation that has been introduced post Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the IVF ruling in Alabama only makes it more difficult for women to have kids, which oddly enough is the opposite sentiment of the Republican party’s “pro-life” agenda. A few Republicans seem to have realized their mistake however, as some are scrambling to come up with a bill that will allow women to receive IVF treatments, but still limit reproductive rights. One bill that was co-sponsored by Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson would define life as beginning at conception, which would remove any potential issues with IVF but would cause problems for women seeking abortions.  

Why anyone would want to target this service in the first place is beyond me, which is why protecting these facilities should be a huge priority. This is why instead of supporting any other bill being proposed to protect IVF, I support Tammy Duckworth’s Access to Family Building Act. This bill is important to me because I have no idea if in my future I will need IVF to start a family of my own. I want to protect IVF because without it, many couples will lose their one opportunity to have children. Solidifying the right to IVF services and allowing the Department of Justice to prevent any entity that attempts to violate such protections will be a monumentally positive, bipartisan decision for women and families everywhere. I ask that you support this bill as well to help ensure that women across the country have access to this service without worry.  Dick Durbin is a cosponsor, as are nearly all of the other Democrats in the U.S. Senate.

I know that you are a governor, and you have no direct influence over what happens in the U.S. Senate, and you probably don’t have much influence over Republicans in the Senate, or members of the U.S. House of Representatives.  But as a governor, you can bring attention to proposed national legislation, and offer your support in a public way that would help build pressure to get this bill passed.  Many Republicans are in favor of allowing IVF services to continue to help women conceive children, and if governors such as you speak out publicly and call for this to be a non-partisan effort to get a bipartisan bill passed in Congress, I think this will help build pressure on moderate Republicans from other states.  I think governors should occasionally speak out on national legislation and national policy, and this is an issue where I believe your voice could help to make a difference. To bring the moderate Republicans on board, it seems to me Democrats such as yourself ought to invite people to see this bill as one that should not be partisan, and call on the moderates in the Republican Party to reject the extreme opinions that have informed the Alabama's Supreme Court decision. I fear that characterizing opposition to Duckworth's Access to Family Building Act as typical Republican attacks on women's rights would only push more of the Republicans and their voters away from this very good bill, which ought to have widespread bipartisan support. 

Sincerely,

[Student_Name]

[Student_Street_Address]

[Student City, State, and Zip Code]

Works Cited

Demante, B. & Jones K.B. (2023, June 15). A year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, trends in state abortion laws have emerged. American Progress CAP 20. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/a-year-after-the-supreme-court-overturned-roe-v-wade-trends-in-state-abortion-laws-have-emerged/ 

Duckworth, T., & Murray, P. (2024, January 18). New Duckworth-Murray WILD Bill Would Protect Right to Access IVF & Other Assisted Reproductive Technology for Every American. Tammy Duckworth U.S. Senator for Illinois. https://www.duckworth.senate.gov/news/press-releases/new-duckworth-murray-wild-bill-would-protect-right-to-access-ivf-other-assisted-reproductive-technology-for-every-american

Hubbard, K. (2024, February 27). IVF: Tammy Duckworth on Senate bill vote.CBS News.  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ivf-tammy-duckworth-senate-bill-vote/

Raman, S. (2024, February 23). Alabama IVF ruling spurs a GOP reckoning on conception bills. Roll Call. https://rollcall.com/2024/02/23/alabama-ivf-ruling-spurs-a-gop-reckoning-on-conception-bills/

Shapiro, A., Mohammad, L., & Handel, S. (2024, February 27). IVF legislation: Tammy Duckworth reacts to Alabama Supreme Court ruling. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2024/02/27/1234158504/ivf-legislation-tammy-duckworth-alabama-supreme-court 

Student favors abortion rights

All women should have the right to do what is best for them when it comes to their body. According to the National Abortion Federation (Dudley, 2003), “Each year almost half of all pregnancies among American women are unintended. About half of these unplanned pregnancies, 1.3 million each year, are ended by abortions” (para 1). Some women who decided to abort the baby may not be in a mental place to provide for a baby. 

Young adolescent girls between the ages of 15 and 19 make up 19% of all abortions; women between 20 and 24 make up 33%; about 25% are women age of 30 or older (Dudley, 2003).  If you were a young single adolescent girl who had sex and became pregnant, you might feel that your best option would be to get an abortion because you’re not capable of caring for a child. Society may then make you feel less of a person; or worse, may call you a “murderer” because you decided abortion was the best option for you. 

The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, section 1 states:

 All persons born or national laws in the United States are subject to jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. 

It is the woman’s right to make the decision to end her pregnancy if she chooses; it is not society's right to criticize her on the decision she made. Abortion is one of those issues where equal protection is difficult to understand, because men and women have different experiences when it comes to pregnancies. Choosing to end her pregnancy does not make her any less of a person than the next woman. 

Also, when the statesmen were writing the Constitution and arguing for its passage, they all understood that privacy was a natural right. This was something that had been a topic in English philosophy and common law already for a century or more, and the fact that there was no part of the Bill or Rights that specifically mentioned privacy tells cannot be used to suggest that we privacy rights are not included. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution reserve unenumerated rights to the people and the states, and it seems likely that every single person at the Constitutional Convention understood that privacy was one of the unenumerated rights that citizens would posses.  So, it makes sense that doctors and their patients should have privacy about reproductive decisions, and the government should not legislate matters that are private decisions between doctors and their patients. The government has a right to legislate against dangerous and harmful procedures, but abortion is usually safer than childbirth. 

Please don’t believe the myth, that abortion is a form of birth control. “If abortion were used as a primary method of birth control a typical woman would have at least two or three pregnancy per year — 30 or more [abortions] during her lifetime” (Dudley, 2003, para 10). So, abortion ought to be an option that women and their doctors can consider. It can be a wise decision to have an abortion if a woman faces a risk of death if she carries a child to term, and it may be a humanitarian choice, even late in a pregnancy, if the baby has a problem that would give them only minutes or hours of life at birth, and those moments of life would be hellishly painful. We therefore ought to fund abortions so that all women, no matter their financial ability, can feel in charge of their own body. Society has no place interfering. If abortion is morally wrong, a woman can answer to God, but considering that 12% (in young women) to 75% (for women in their late 40s) of all pregnancies end in spontaneous abortion (miscarriages) anyway (Rice, 2018), God does not seem to be overly concerned with the well-being of blastulas and embryos.

 Instead of shaming women for controlling their reproductive power, let’s fund and make sure that the women can get proper healthcare, contraceptive education, as sexual education as early as high school. Maybe that could be start a positive start to helping cut down a number of abortions.

References

Dudley, Susan. (2003). Abortion Facts. National Abortion Federation. http://prochoice.org/wp-content/uploads/women_who_have_abortions.pdf 

Rice, W. R. (2018). The high abortion cost of human reproduction. bioRxiv (July 2018) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326485445_The_high_abortion_cost_of_human_reproduction 

 14 Amendment of the Constitution

Student accepts state funding for abortions in some cases, but doesn't want state funding for all abortions

Dear Senator Righter,

As you know, I am a constituent in your district from Teutopolis. We have talked before – you helped in my past internship at Illinois Policy, and I’m sure your previous aide, Judy, has told you about my recent internship in Washington D.C. I am a Social Work major at the University of Illinois Springfield, and I wanted to bring your attention to a bill that I believe you should vote no to.

HB 40, Access to Abortion, is a bill that provides taxpayer funded abortions to all women in Illinois, including those on Medicare and state employee’s insurance plans. Currently, the state only provides funding for abortions in cases such as rape, incest, and to protect the mother’s life. The bill also ensures that abortion will be legal in Illinois even if the federal government repeals Roe v. Wade.

I believe that this bill should not be passed for multiple reasons. Though I am conservative, I am pro-choice. I believe that women should be able to choose what is best for their lives and their bodies. However, I disagree with this bill. First, this bill would cost Illinoisians millions of dollars, millions of dollars we do not have and cannot afford. In 2015, there were nearly 40,000 abortions in Illinois, and if abortions were free, it is proven that even more women would get them. Currently, abortions cost about $1,650. That would amount to millions of dollars of further debt that the state cannot afford.

I agree that in rape, incest, and mother safety cases, abortion can be payed for by state tax dollars because that was not the woman’s decision, but in other situations, that should not be the case. It is not hard to not get pregnant. Plan B is around $30-$40, male and female condoms are a few dollars. Abstinence is free. Because of the Affordable Care Act, many women’s birth control is free or inexpensive. We should not provide free abortions to everyone because they find it too difficult to buy protection, “condoms don’t feel good”, are careless with their birth control, or do not have the education to understand how to not become pregnant.

When a woman chooses to have sex and not protect herself from pregnancy, the only person at fault is her and the man. It should not be the job of her fellow citizens to bail her out of the problem she put herself in. Senator Righter, please vote NO to HB 40.

My comment on this excellent example of a policy advocacy letter is that it is refreshing to read an opinion on this issue that is nuanced and takes a stand based on ideals of fiscal responsibility and personal responsibility.  So often any policy advocacy related to abortion is entirely one-sided with an extreme stand totally against nearly all abortions and state funding for abortions or else totally in favor of policies to make abortion accessible to all, including those who can’t afford it.  Another thing that I find interesting is that you hardly even touch the moral issues related to “rights of unborn children” or “rights of the mothers to control their bodies.”  You dispose of that right at the start with a statement about your general opinion that abortions ought to be a women’s matter of choice, but when it comes to the public funding them, the public purse ought to facilitate abortions only in the three rare extremes (life of the mother, rape, and incest).  The letter is also a good example because of its elegance and directness.

A few points just for us to think about, that are really not about the letter itself:

1) If someone wants to make abortions free for all those who want them, they can create a charity and fund abortions for poor women.  Let the advocates for accessible abortion provide them through private means.

2) What about the case of unborn children who are severely malformed or unhealthy, so that a doctor predicts they may perish within hours of birth; could that situation be added to the standard categories of rape, incest, and health-of-the-mother?

3) What about cases where the unborn children have a reasonably good chance of survival, at least for a matter of years rather than hours, but are likely to be in need of intensive medical intervention throughout their lives, and are also likely to be so profoundly disabled that they present a tremendous potential burden on the society and the family?  In those cases, can financial considerations be taken into consideration, and should the state fund abortions to save money in the long run? 

4) And, what about the moral issues?  If the state is going to fund some abortions in special cases, can anything be done to address the objections of those who feel so strongly that abortion is akin to murder?  It is normally accepted in a democracy that when you fulfill your duties as a citizen and pay your taxes, you understand that some of that money you’ve contributed will go to fund things you strongly object to (I object to a wide range of things done in my name by my government with my tax dollars, especially the killing of many innocent people with our careless, callous, and cruel arial bombardments from drones and so forth). But, is abortion a special case, where the opponents are so deeply morally offended by the act that the government should fund those special case abortions only with a special source of funding that some persons could refuse to pay?  Perhaps it could be handled in a way similar to federal funding for elections, where taxpayers check a box to agree to contribute some of their tax contribution to support public funding of elections.  

The four points I raise were correctly ignored in the letter; I just offer them to provoke some thought and debate.