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| PRITZKER: Fear of J.B. scares ideologues. Good! |
I
refer to a bill now pending before Gov. J.B, Pritzker – the one approved last
week by the General Assembly that says people ought to be 21 years old in order
to legally buy tobacco products and other items for vaping. As in inhaling
fumes from tobacco-less products.
THEN,
THERE’S A pair of bills that will be pending before the state Legislature this
spring – ones that would eliminate many of the restrictive measures that anti-abortion
legislators have tried to impose throughout the years.
They’re
going to screech “bloody murder!!!!” (literally, I kid you not) in claiming
they’re somehow looking out for a life that has yet to be born, thereby justifying
the taking into account of a mother’s sentiments about her own body into
irrelevance.
But
when it comes to efforts to reduce the legal availability of smoking-related
products to young people, the ideologues amongst us are going to claim their
opposition is meant to protect the rights of personal choice of young people.
It’s
almost like they’re claiming the right of a 16-year-old girl to develop a
smoking habit – claiming that it’s her own body she’s hurting. It’s her choice.
YET
THEY’RE PREPARED to screech and scream the “murderer” and “baby killer” labels
at a young girl who thinks she’s not ready for a baby, and is under the (as the
ideologues would view it) the misguided belief that it’s her own body being
impacted by the decision to terminate the pregnancy.
It
was nearly a half-century ago that the Supreme Court of the United States
issued the larger ruling that struck down measures criminalizing abortion. The
strategy throughout the years is to accept the general concept, but have
legislatures impose so many restrictions so as to make it next to impossible
for some women to actually have access to abortion.
The
two bills now pending (one in the Illinois House of Representatives and the
other in the state Senate) would eliminate many of the restrictions they’ve
tried to enact – even up to the final days of a pregnancy.
Their
desire to meddle with the desires of a mother seem to be to the extreme they’d
want to require the paramedics to be on the scene of an abortion to try to
revive the fetus.
THEY
TALK ABOUT denying unborn children “independent rights,” but it really comes
across as meddling with the mother’s desires – even though hers is the existing
life that ought to be the priority.
But
then on a real public health issue such as smoking, we’re going to hear the
nonsense rhetoric of how absurd it is to tell someone they have to be 21 in
order to smoke.
Maybe
we’ll even hear the argument made that people can enlist in the army and die
for their country at age 18 – why not let them smoke?
As
it was, the General Assembly passed a measure just last year calling for this same
age increase – only to have then-Gov. Bruce Rauner wield the “veto” pen to the
measure.
THE
FACT THAT smoking is a foul habit that impacts everybody around you somehow
doesn’t matter to the ideologues who want to view it solely as a personal choice.
Whereas the baby forced into life because of the denial of a personal choice is
something we all wind up having to cover the cost of caring for.
I
find it amusing that the ideologues seem to fear Pritzker is going to push the
abortion measure erasing generations of restrictions into law, while also
giving his approval to a smoking age boost.
They’re
going to get all hysterical with their rhetoric because government basically is
going to prevent them from meddling into the lives of others – the young girl
who really shouldn’t have a pregnancy now and the people who have to breathe in
the fumes of the nitwit smokers amongst them.
But
then again, hysteria and nonsense is oft the way of politics in Illinois!
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