The Chicago News Cooperative, reporting for the New York Times, wrote an article about the city of Chicago's decision to close down 6 of its 12 mental health facilities this spring, which will result in an increase in the number of people with mental illness being charged with crimes and sent to prison. This decision will also impact the already existing problem of overcrowding in the Cook County Jail. The ACLU of Illinois' Institutionalized Persons Project Director and Associate Legal Director, Ben Wolf, was quoted in the article:

Benjamin S. Wolf, associate legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, said the impact of the closings should prompt a re-evaluation of the way the mentally ill are served in Chicago.

“We need to step back and rethink how we allocate mental health services,” he said. “We’re starving the system in the ways it helps people best.”

Read the whole thing.

From the Chicago Tribune’s “Voice of the People” section on February 17, 2012.

Spirit of openness

It is ironic that Mayor Rahm Emanuel relies on his experience in the White House under Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to justify his decision to withhold large numbers of records about the city's new speed cameras ("Mayor won't detail speed-camera push; Emanuel withholds or heavily censors records that may show how law went from idea to reality" (News, Feb. 12).

In fact, both of those presidents emphatically rejected the very policy that Emanuel now touts.

In explaining this decision, the mayor's lawyer says that the mayor's office will adhere to the Illinois Freedom of Information Act; the story reported that he said the city "sees no need to disclose more than required."

In fact, upon assuming the presidency, both Clinton and Obama repudiated this very position — rejecting policies embraced by their predecessors. Instead, the two administrations that employed Chicago's current mayor each instituted a "presumption of disclosure" policy that required that agencies only withhold records where it is reasonably foreseeable that disclosure would harm an interest protected by one of the statutory exemptions, or disclosure is prohibited by law. In other words, no agency could withhold information simply because it could technically do so under the law.

If the mayor is truly going to afford us the benefit of his many years of service in Washington, he should abandon this crabbed view of the law, foster a spirit of openness and adopt the policies of the administrations for which he worked.

— Harvey Grossman, legal director, American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, Chicago

In recent weeks and months we have seen several painful examples of the way in which politics is used to threaten and damage women’s health care – the Komen/Planned Parenthood funding issue, the issue of contraceptive coverage in employee health care benefit plans, the personhood amendments in states across the nation and severe restrictions on reproductive healthcare in several states. Now the campaign against women’s health care has come back to Illinois. We are currently facing two bills that seek to close down access to reproductive health care under the guise of protecting women’s health– by ramming measures through, of all places, the Agriculture Committee.

The first measure – House Bill 4117 – threatens to shut down access to many women’s reproductive health care services, including abortion, in our state. House Bill 4117 (which we saw last year) creates a series of new, burdensome regulations, unrelated to protecting health, for facilities that perform abortions – regulations that will cause many, if not most, of the Illinois’ abortion providers to shutter their facilities. This is, of course, the aim of the anti-abortion zealots who propose this bill – which will be heard in the Agriculture Committee as early as Tuesday, February 21^st (along with measures on tethering dogs and boat safety).  The hearing of this bill in the Agriculture Committee insults all who care about women’s health.

The second bill -- House Bill 4085 --  would force all Illinois women seeking abortion, regardless of individual health circumstances, to view an ultrasound of the fetus or sign a statement documenting the reasons for her refusal. Imagine how traumatic viewing this ultrasound could be for some women, particularly those terminating for health reasons or because of rape or incest, and if they refuse to view the ultrasound, having to justify their decision in a written statement! The bill also increases costs for women seeking essential health care and increases the cost of regulation for a state agency already financially strapped.

So to put it mildly, it’s been an eventful couple of months for women's health care nationally and at home. Advocates for quality women's health care around the country are facing similar bills or worse.
 
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