On March 15th, SB 1619 (Senate Amendment 1), the Illinois Personal Responsibility Education Program (IL PREP), passed out of the Illinois Senate Public Health Committee with a vote of 6 in favor, 4 opposed. SB 1619 is now on second reading in the Senate.

SB 1619 (Senate Amendment 1) provides that elementary or secondary public schools offering sexual health education must use information that is medically accurate, age appropriate,  evidence based and complete.  The law would require school districts to make curriculum and course materials available for parents to view upon request and allow pupils to be excused for any part of the instruction at the written request of his or her parent or guardian.

Senators voting in favor of SB 1619 (Amendment 1)

Senator William Delgado (D-Chicago)
Senator Mattie Hunter (D-Chicago)
Senator Susan Garrett (D-Highwood)
Senator Michael Noland (D-Elgin)
Senator Dan Kotowski (D-Park Ridge) substituting for Sen. Schoenberg
Senator Heather Steans (D-Chicago)

Senators voting in opposition to SB 1619 (Amendment 1)

Senator Dave Syverson (R-Rockford)
Senator Shane Cultra (R-Onarga)
Senator Christine Johnson (R-Sycamore)
Senator Carole Pankau (R-Bloomingdale)

For more information on SB 1619:

• Download the Fact-sheet

• Read the Bill

ACLU of Illinois attorneys were among a platoon of lawyers that fought for some of Chicago’s most significant reforms during the last five decades, according to an article on theweekbehind.com.

Even as so much has been achieved, the tough work of fixing today's problems remains a challenge.

“An era that began with Paddy Bauler declaring, 'Chicago ain’t ready for reform' ended with every politician on the scene, including the new mayor, promising to bring it. But what [Mayor-elect Rahm] Emanuel and the others call for remains vague and often elides the city’s deepest problems.

Patronage is withering on the vine—but the vine is still rooted. Massive election fraud has disappeared but cheating here and there is still with us.

We are no longer the most segregated of cities, but racial and economic inequality remains our most festering sore. No entity continues to call out for reform more than our school system, but the so-called reforms proposed by Emanuel, rooted in those of his predecessor, are technocratic nostrums that have thus far flunked despite reams of flackery saying otherwise.

The heroic lawyers of recent decades wrought reform and changed the city, but reform must be an ongoing process as new issues emerge, such as privatization and the myriad inequities of tax increment financing (TIFs). We’re waiting for the next generation of heroes. Chicago is ready for them.”

ACLU members are protesting outside of Rep. Darlene Senger's Naperville office Wednesday to fight her efforts to "regulate abortion out of existence" in Illinois.

Photo courtesy of Dave Waycie. For more photos visit us on Facebook.

According to an article Wednesday in the Naperville Sun, Senger sponsored a bill that would require abortion clinics to be retrofitted to resemble outpatient surgery centers, meaning equipment such as defibrillators and ventilators would be required and hallway and parking lot dimensions would change.

By a 13-0 vote, before a packed room of angry abortion rights supporters clad in “Women are not livestock” T-shirts and buttons emblazoned with a cow, the House Agricultural Committee advanced legislation that would put new financial burdens on abortion clinics.

The Agriculture Committee, stocked mainly by socially conservative Democrats and Republicans from downstate, has been the conduit to get gun-rights and anti-abortion legislation to the House floor for years, the article noted.

“We ought to be calling ‘shame, shame, shame’ on Representative Senger and the members of the Agriculture Committee, who may have expertise in regulating muskrats and fertilizer and heifers and roadkill. But women, I respectfully submit, are not livestock,” Colleen Connell told the panel. Connell is the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.