The constitutionality of Illinois' parental consent law for minors receiving abortions is now up to the state Supreme Court.
Though the Illinois Parental Notice of Abortion Act was passed in 1995, Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society tells OneNewsNow it has been held up for 17 years by legal challenges from the American Civil Liberties Union.
"This has been a lengthy and tortured legal process. We've beaten back the ACLU in federal court, and we're very hopeful that this will now bring an end to the Illinois state proceedings so that the parents and the children of the state of Illinois will have the same protection prior to an abortion that the parents and children of many, many other states have," Breen comments.
He contends that the lack of a parental notice law has made The Prairie State the abortion capital of the Midwest.
"We get calls all the time from folks whose children were brought to Illinois -- whether by boyfriends or whomever, sometimes sex abusers -- and those children are then subjected to abortions that parents have no idea [about], and then they're just returned to their home states," the attorney explains.
ACLU attorneys have told the Illinois Supreme Court that children have the same ability to make an abortion decision that adult women would, and that abortion is no more dangerous than a shot of penicillin. Breen deems that "an absurd argument."
A decision is expected late this year or early next year.