West Cook News

House Speaker Chris Welch (D-Hillside) is encouraging residents to get involved in the fight to erase human trafficking.

“Human trafficking is a modern form of slavery,” Welch recently posted on Facebook. “This is Human Trafficking Prevention Month, take a moment to learn how to spot this serious crime. Everyone can play a role in ending human trafficking.”  

With Illinois home to the 11th most human trafficking cases in the country as of 2018, some argue Springfield could and should be doing more to root out the problem.

Recently, Welch faced criticism for sponsoring a bill to repeal the Parental Notice of Abortion law, which required that a parent or guardian be informed when their under 18-year-old daughter was seeking to have an abortion.

“It never made sense to me that a minor can make other decisions – about carrying a pregnancy to term, about adoption, about sophisticated health care – without parental notification, but only if she seeks an abortion do we require this communication,” Welch told ACLU Illinois. “We cannot pretend as elected officials that we can force ourselves into these situations because some disagree with a minor’s decision about their life.”

Some critics point out Welch took his position despite data that shows more than half of sex trafficking survivors have had at least one abortion and SaveParentalNotifications.com reports “human traffickers, sexual predators and other abusers frequently use abortion to cover up their crimes,” which are overwhelmingly perpetrated on girls between the ages of 12 and 14.

According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, when the law was first put in place in Illinois in 2013 abortions on minors dropped 57%.