Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Chicago will be allocating $500,000 in funds for people in neighboring states seeking abortions.
QUICK FACTS:
- Lightfoot said that the funds for those wanting an abortion from nearby states is just the beginning of the funding Chicago will provide, Breitbart reported.
- “$500,000 is simply a down payment to help our frontline providers get over this immediate hurdle,” Lightfoot said on MSNBC’s ‘Hallie Jackson Reports.’ “But they tell us they’ve already seen an exponential increase in the amount of calls to helplines from out of state, just from what’s happened in Texas.”
- The mayor claimed she expected Chicago to be a central spot for those wanting an abortion in states with stricter laws.
CHICAGO MAYOR ON PAYING FOR NON-CHICAGOANS TO RECEIVE ABORTIONS IN THE CITY:
“And if you look around Chicago, we’ve already got a number of states that have the so-called trigger laws that would ban abortion upon the reversal of Roe,” Lightfoot said. “So we’ve seen a substantial increase already, and we’re expecting, frankly, an explosion of new cases from women in Wisconsin, Missouri, potentially Michigan, Indiana.”
BACKGROUND:
- The funds were approved by the City Council as part of the Chicago Department of Public Health’s budget and its commissioner, Dr. Allison Arwady, who said the city was “obligated to protect the health of women.”
- “Prior to the legalization of abortion, tens of thousands of women wound up in emergency rooms every year from botched, illegal abortions,” Arwady said. “Not all of them survived. We must never go back to that time.”
- Lightfoot said next on her radar were decisions allowing same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, and the use of contraceptives.
