Planned Parenthood's president Steve Trombley made the remarkably bizarre statement that the court was trying to get the religious right fired up in advance of the upcoming election.
Trombley said the court acted "to revive a controversial issue two months before the election to re-energize the evangelical Christian base in support of the Topinka-Birkett ticket."The politicization of this issue occurred 11 years ago, not this week. That's when the more heavily Democratic court defiantly refused to write the bypass rules, which give teenagers the right to go around notice requirements to get an abortion if they have been abused by their parents. Then Attorney General Jim Ryan, who I was working for at the time, told a federal court that he could not defend the law without the court's bypass provisions, which had been contemplated in the law.
Even though Jim Ryan is pro-life, he put his personal position aside and did his job as the state's top lawyer -- despite criticism from pro-life groups. I'm assuming the current Attorney General Lisa Madigan will be just as professional and resist criticism from pro-choice groups by going into federal court to lift the injunction that has been in place since 1995.
As for Trombley's comment, parental notification is supported by up to 80 percent of voters and every state surrounding Illinois has a notification law. When Gov. Edgar signed the bill in 1995, he noted the majority of pro-choice Illinoisans support parental notification.
It's Planned Parenthood and Trombley who are way out of the mainstream on this.
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