(LifeSiteNews) — Multiple Illinois bishops are forbidding parishes from hosting drives to sign a petition for a state ballot advisory question aimed at legally requiring parental consent for medical interventions such as abortions and “sex changes” for minors.
Along with prohibiting Catholic church-based drives for the petition, the Dioceses of Rockford and Joliet have instructed pastors not to send out mass emails to parishioners about the petition or the group promoting it, the Parents Matter Coalition (PMC). The petition seeks to place on the November 2024 ballot the following advisory question:
“Shall the written consent from a minor’s parent or guardian be required before any entity, person, clinic or school can provide a minor (under the age of 18 years) any non-emergency medical procedure, medication, pharmaceutical, or any gender modification procedure, gender identification counseling or gender therapy?”
Aside from gender “modification” interventions for minors, the desired parental notification law is aimed in particular at preventing abortions performed on minors without the consent of a parent or guardian, according to Vince Heaton, co-chair of PMC.
LifeSiteNews has not yet confirmed whether other Illinois dioceses have issued an official statement regarding promotion of the parental consent petition.
The decision of the Illinois bishops was shared to LifeSiteNews by a 30-year-veteran Illinois pro-lifer who wishes to remain anonymous. The reason for the decision related to the pro-lifer was that the bishops “want to focus on” assisted suicide legislation that may potentially arise in Illinois, to which the pro-lifer objected that they “are fully capable of doing two things at once.”
Robert Gilligan, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois (CCI), which describes itself as “the public policy voice of the Illinois bishops and lay Catholics,” told LifeSiteNews the CCI is considering a statement that supports the goals of the Parents Matter Coalition but requests that parishes don’t promote the petition through emails or petition drives.
Cardinal Blase Cupich of the Archdiocese of Chicago and the bishops of Illinois make up the board of the CCI, which generally takes direction from Cardinal Cupich.
Gilligan told LifeSiteNews that he believes the petition “needs to be part of a larger effort” to inculcate understanding about its purpose.
“Give us a chance to educate the laity on the moral reasons why this is justifiable. Give us the opportunity to catechize people on the importance of parents’ role in raising their children, the dangers of what’s lurking out there with gender reassignment, the dangers of what’s lurking out there with repealed parental notification laws,” Gilligan said.
He told LifeSiteNews on Wednesday that not all Illinois bishops had “signed on” to the pending CCI statement.
Heaton shared that he began efforts to promote the petition in May 2022, when he approached Bishop Ronald Hicks of the Diocese of Joliet and asked for the support of the Catholic Church. Hicks was previously appointed Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Chicago by Cardinal Cupich and also served as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese from 2018 to 2020.
“He basically pointed me to the CCI, the Catholic Conference of Illinois,” Heaton told LifeSiteNews.
Heaton was told he needed to build a strong base of support in order to get the Illinois bishops and Cupich behind the effort, so he set out contacting Christian pastors and ministry leaders about the petition. It was when Heaton met former Illinois state representative Jeanne Ives and she expressed interest in his endeavor that they together formed the Parents Matter Coalition.
The PMC co-chair only recently learned of the Joliet Diocese’s decision to prohibit pastors from allowing churches to promote the petition through drives or mass emails. He had been expecting a “clear official position statement from the CCI, Cardinal Cupich and the other five diocesan bishops” since the beginning of November.
While Gilligan told LifeSiteNews he “doesn’t necessarily buy the assumption” that the majority of Catholics will support such a parental notification measure, Heaton said he has seen strong support for it, with eight or more out of 10 people agreeing to sign the PMC petition when approached.
“The responses we’re getting transcend all political boundaries. That doesn’t happen under other petition-type initiatives,” Heaton said. He shared that, ordinarily, when he is attempting to place a particular politician on the state ballot, for example, three or four out of 10 people will sign the petition.
However, remarkably, about nine out of 10 people agree to sign this parental consent petition, according to Heaton.
“It’s rare that I don’t get everyone to sign. And they’ll go and get their spouse and say ‘Hey, come sign this.’ That doesn’t happen under normal circumstances,” he told LifeSiteNews.
The amount of support he is seeing outweighs even the 78 percent of Illinoisans who responded to a 2022 survey expressing support for parental notification before a minor child obtains an abortion.
While an advisory question on the ballot is non-binding, meaning the legislature must agree to enact it once it is on the Illinois ballot, Heaton told LifeSiteNews he believes that whatever they decide, placing the question on the ballot will amplify efforts to mandate parental consent.
He is fighting for the ballot advisory question with the expectation that Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker will ask the state legislature to make abortion a constitutional right, as he said he would do last year, declaring that “The right to privacy and bodily autonomy demand that we establish a constitutional protection for reproductive rights in Illinois.”
Heaton explained that a display of robust support for a parental notification law via the ballot advisory question will send a strong message to the public and even “call out” the state legislature if they approve a pro-abortion amendment with 55-60 percent approval but reject the parental consent law with 75 percent approval or more.
“We can say if a high portion of people are supporting it, why aren’t you as the legislature supporting it, acting in support of what your constituents want?” Heaton noted.
“Even if it falls flat on its face, we’ve educated parents, we’ve created more of a voice. I’ve maintained that the pro-life people are too silent, that they need to speak out more,” he told LifeSiteNews.