Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently signed into law an amendment to the Health Care Right of Conscience Act (HCRCA) that stipulated enforcing measures meant to block the spread of COVID-19 are not in violation of it.
However, Senate Republican Deputy Leader Sue Rezin, (R-Morris), has been a vocal opponent of Senate Bill 1169, which amends the HCRCA, according to a release on her official website, with thousands of people filing witness slips in opposition to the amendment.
“Over the course of this bill I would say for the last week we had a 7,000 people slip in opposition to amendment,” she said on the Senate floor. “We had over 54,000 slips in opposition of amendment, which is very similar to (the) amendment that we’re discussing here today. and in the past 24 hours we’ve had over 22,000 people slip in opposition to amendment.”
Rezin also noted that over the last decade, the amendment generated the most people filing slips in opposition to a bill.
“There are concerns around the state that people are not being heard,” she said on the Senate floor, “that their rights are being taken away from them.”
Rezin said in her release that the residents filing slips did so because they believe in a representative government and hoped that their voices would not be ignored.
“Yet, despite their efforts, the majority party chose to ignore them,” she maintained in a statement on her website. “They chose to ignore the will of the people of our state because the governor demanded changes to an incredibly important law designed to protect every Illinoisan’s strongly held religious and moral principles.”
The amendment that the governor signed into law paves the way for employers, businesses and other organizations to enact measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and its variants. Moreover, according to the assembly’s website, the amendment stipulates that enforcing those measures is not a violation of the HCRCA.
The bill, signed into law on Nov. 8, is also designed to ensure the HCRCA cannot be manipulated to create an unsafe working environment, according to a release on the governor’s website.
