Our “progressive” Springfield swampsters have found another way to waste the money of taxpayers and the time of bureaucrats in bankrupt, debt-ridden Illinois: A bill to create the “Illinois Women & Girls Council” has been sponsored in the Illinois House (HB 5544) by none other than Anna Moeller (D-Elgin), the sponsor of the school sexuality-indoctrination bill. The Women & Girls Council bill is flying through the Illinois House and Senate aided and abetted by even Republicans.

This council will “advise the Governor and the General Assembly” on everything the bill’s sponsors can think of pertaining to women and girls, including—”but not limited to”—the following (take a deep breath):

• cultivating “civic participation”

• ending the effectively non-existent “gender pay gap”

• ending “discrimination in professional and academic opportunities”

• “promoting resources and opportunities for academic and professional growth”

• ensuring “legal protections and recourse” in cases of sexual harassment

• preventing “domestic violence”

• providing “proper standards of healthcare” for women with a particular focus on “demographics”

• increasing “access to reproductive healthcare”

• increasing access to healthcare and employment for men who pretend to be women

• building relationships with and disseminating (misleading) information to “State agencies and commissions” in furtherance of these breathtakingly expansive goals

• paying extra attention to skin color in, well, everything

Whew.

If there’s a problem, “progressives” see an opportunity to pick your pocket.

Here are some reasons this bill should have been opposed:

1.) The council is unnecessary, will waste the money of taxpayers and the time of lawmakers, and will inevitably result in the expansion of an already gargantuan government.

2.) The inclusion of objectively male persons (i.e., biological males who identify as women) undermines the entire purpose of the council and contributes to the eradication of public recognition of sex differences. This council will seek to increase access to healthcare and employment for men who pretend to be women, which means more government money for chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation, and more discrimination against those who don’t want to hire men who cross-dress.

3.) The council will seek to “increase access to reproductive healthcare,” which means more money for and fewer restrictions on abortion.

4.) The council, which favors women over men, is antithetical to the spirit of the ERA which says that “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”

5.) One of the findings in the bill falsely claims that “Illinois women earn 80 cents on the dollar compared with similarly employed men.” Research shows that “Childless women have earnings that are quite similar to men’s salaries.” In other words, women who choose not to have children—which interrupts employment—earn the same as men whose employment is not interrupted (i.e., “similarly employed men.”)

6.) One of the findings used to justify this council is the female lung cancer mortality rates per 100,000 in the years 2011-2013. Interestingly, the CDC reports that in 2014 (the most recent statistics available), “155,526 people in the United States died from lung cancer, including 84,859 men and 70,667 women.” Another article says that “[l]ung cancer kills nearly two and a half times as many men as women.”

7.) The bill’s sponsors also cited the breast cancer mortality rate for women (20.9 per 100,000) as a rationale for this council. Compare that to prostate and testicular cancer mortality rates for men cited in a 2016 study by the National Institutes of Health: 21.4 per 100,000 for prostate cancer and .25 for testicular cancer. Combined, the prostate and testicular mortality rate for men is 21.65, exceeding the breast cancer mortality rate for women.

Additional facts not included:

• White males accounted for 7 out of 10 suicides in 2016.

• Incarceration rates per 100,000 are 126 for women and 1,352 for men.

• According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “Men are more likely than women to use almost all types of illicit drugs, and illicit drug use is more likely to result in emergency department visits or overdose deaths for men than for women.”

• “[A]lmost twice as many men as women suffer a heart attack each year (110,000 men, compared to 65,000 women).”

• Men are 1.5 times more likely to develop Parkinson’s disease than women.

• “[B]oys have a one-in-52 chance of developing autism spectrum disorders (ASD), compared to a one-in-252 risk for girls.”

• “Men are far more likely to die from malignant melanoma—the most serious type of skin cancer—compared to women.”

• “In 2015… 72.5 percent of females who had recently graduated high school were enrolled in a two-year or four-year college, compared to 65.8 percent of men.”

• In the fall of 2017, women comprised “more than 56 percent of students on campuses nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

• “Almost 80 per cent of students majoring in the fields of healthcare, public administration, psychology and education, which comprise one-quarter of all degrees, are female.”

• According to the National Girls’ Collaborative Project:
  • Female students’ achievement in mathematics and science is on par with their male peers 
  • Women earned 57.3% of bachelor’s degrees in all fields in 2013 and 50.3% of science and engineering bachelor’s degrees.

Before Leftists go all half-cocked about this article’s title, let me be clear: The dumb stuff to which the title refers is not domestic violence, breast cancer, or lung cancer. The dumb stuff is the bloated bill itself, stuffed with facts (or pseudo-facts and references to pseudo-women). Apparently, just listing stuff about women is sufficient rationale for the creation of a council. It’s annoying that swampsters even took work-time to create dumb stuff like this bill.

This proposal has already passed the Illinois House on April 24th by a vote of 64 to 24. It now moves to the Illinois Senate.

And why did 4 Republicans vote for it and 25 of their colleagues abstain from taking a position against it? These 4 Republicans and many of their 25 colleagues refused to oppose this unnecessary bill because they feared that come re-election time, opposition would be used to accuse them falsely of being against women. Principle yields to politics—again.

If Illinois swampsters are determined to create an advisory council, maybe it should be a Men & Boys Council to combat the relentless war on biological males.

But, how about Springfield swampsters instead focus their gimlet eyes on digging the good people who pay their ample salaries out of the financial grave in which the swampsters have buried them.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact your state senator to express your opposition to this unnecessary and ill-conceived bill.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: