In an executive order signed late last month, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot blocked the Chicago Police Department from assisting out-of-state law enforcement if they want to slap handcuffs on women who come to The Windy City to get an abortion.
“We’re not gonna be complicit,” the Mayor vowed, “in living out the dreams of another state that wants to criminalize women for seeking access to health care.”
The only problem with that vow is that red-state state troopers aren’t staking out highways and backroads looking for post-abortion women.
“This is not a measure that's actually happening,” says Eric Scheidler, whose Pro-Life Action League has fought abortion in abortion-supporting Illinois for decades.
You wouldn’t know that by reading a Chicago Sun-Times article about the Mayor's defiant executive order. An abortion-rights activist said women are “terrified” about being pulled over by police, and a state lawmaker told the Sun-Times an anti-abortion activist was seen taking photos of license plates to hand over to law enforcement.
According to Scheidler, what is behind Lightfoot’s executive order is Chicago politics.
“It's just a way for Lori Lightfoot to signal to her extremist pro-abortion supporters at the ACLU, and at Planned Parenthood, and at her lobbying group here in Illinois, Personal PAC,” Scheidler says, “that she is in their pocket – deep, deep inside their pocket.”
Back in May, when the draft opinion was leaked, Lightfoot announced $500,000 in city funds would help women afford to travel to Chicago and also, "if necessary," she said, pay for the abortion procedure, too.
