By Jim Nowlan
The airwaves are clogged with Hallowe’en-scary ads this fall, making preposterous claims that voting for Republican candidates for the state Supreme Court will cause Illinois to criminalize abortion. When desperate, you do desperate things.
The absurdity is obvious to any thoughtful voter, to wit: Illinois is a Blue state that strongly supports a woman’s legal right to an abortion. Right or wrong on the issue, Gov. J. B. Pritzker has been bending over backwards to expand abortion rights, and the veto-proof Democratic majorities in the state House and Senate stand shoulder to shoulder with him.
Illinois Supreme Court judges don’t make laws. They interpret laws enacted by the legislature and governor. And there is no way the legislature is going to enact a law that jeopardizes their support for legal abortion.
Criminalizing abortion just ain’t gonna happen in Illinois, no matter who is elected to the Illinois Supreme Court this November, and to claim otherwise is itself an almost criminal deceit.
The campaign scare ads are sponsored by longtime interests like the trial lawyers, unions and Democratic Party of Cook County, all of which fear their six-decade, continuous dominance of the Illinois Supreme Court may come to an end. Thus, the desperate moves.
From 1962 to 2022, Democrats have had a continuous majority on the seven-member Illinois Supreme Court. This majority has consistently protected the political sugar daddies who brought them onto the court: Defrocked and indicted Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, and Ed Burke, the indicted Chicago Alderman, and longtime chair of the Cook Democratic Party committee that nominates judges.
For example, Democrat judges twice knocked off the ballot hugely popular initiatives to take redistricting away from the Democrats. Ditto for term limits. Ditto for anything that might diminish the power of the Cook County Dems.
It’s time for a change.
The two Democrat candidates for the state high court must disavow these Hallowe’en fantasy ads. If they fail to do so, they should, on this matter alone, be rejected at the polls, for what I consider serious judicial and campaign ethics violations.
