Chicago City Wire

Critics are calling attention to a bill that would make Illinois a sanctuary state for children seeking gender reassignment. 

The legislation is sponsored by State Sen. Mike Simmons (D-Chicago). Simmons was appointed to his position in 2021 and has not faced an election. 

“Illinois Senator Mike Simmons..... November 29th, 2022 introduced SB4245 bill..... Gender-Affirming Health Care Protection Act. Another Evil one after the children,” family rights advocate Wendy Wynn who runs the Facebook page Standup Opt-Out said. 

The bill would allow for “sanctuary” status for minors seeking gender reassignment. 

“Illinois too is plagued with Democrats who are as hell-bent on destroying the bodies, minds, and hearts of children as they are in destroying the nuclear family, publicly subsidized schools, and urban communities,” The Illinois Family Institute wrote. “While Kelly Cassidy has a long history of using the government to normalize disordered eroticism, somehow another homosexual lawmaker got the jump on her with regard to a “trans”-sanctuary bill for Illinois. That lawmaker is State Senator Michael Simmons (D-Chicago) who was appointed to the office in February 2021 when another disastrous leftist lawmaker—Heather Steans—retired.” The institute underscored that “On November 29,2022 Simmons—who has no children—introduced SB 4245, the ‘Gender-Affirming Health Care Protection Act,’ which prohibits the ‘State,’ ‘law enforcement,’ and the ‘Governor’ from complying with statutes and subpoenas issued by other states regarding experimental and ghoulish medical ‘interventions’ with which leftists like to maim minors’ bodies.”

SB4245 would make it illegal to return minors to their home state if they are in Illinois seeking gender reassignment. The bill’s synopsis reads in parts as below: “Creates the Gender-Affirming Health Care Protection Act. Restricts the State from: (1) applying a law of another state that authorizes civil or criminal penalties against any person for providing, authorizing, aiding, assisting, receiving, or otherwise allowing a child to receive gender-affirming care or referring a child for such care; (2) enforcing or satisfying a civil judgment received under a law of another state that authorizes civil or criminal penalties against any person for providing, authorizing, aiding, assisting, receiving, or otherwise allowing a child to receive gender-affirming care or referring a child for such care; or (3) aiding or intentionally participating in a criminal investigation, arrest, search, or detention of an individual pursuant to a criminal law of another state that authorizes civil or criminal penalties against any person for providing, authorizing, aiding, assisting, receiving, or otherwise allowing a child to receive gender-affirming care or referring a child for such care,” the bill’s entry reads. “Prohibits a law enforcement officer from knowingly participating in the arrest of an individual pursuant to an out-of-state arrest warrant issued solely on the basis of the individual providing, authorizing, aiding, assisting, receiving, or otherwise allowing a child to receive gender-affirming care or referring a child for such care.”

Gov. J.B. Pritzker is directly involved with funding gender reassignment at Lurie Hospital in Chicago. The Pritzker Foundation gave Lurie’s Childen’s Hospital $6.45 million in January. That was on top of a previous $15 million in 2019.

The hospital’s gender assignment team has its messaging out to local schools as well. "Beyond Binary: Gender in Schools," a training manual offered to schools, provided an academic queer theory on the subject of gender identity that “follows the basic narrative of academic queer theory: white, Western society has created an oppressive gender binary, falsely dividing the world into the categories of man and woman, that has resulted in “transphobia,” “cissexism,” and “systemic discrimination” against racial and sexual minorities.” As a result, clinics offering costly medical procedures for children have begun to proliferate. Pediatrician Michelle Cretella said in the past eight years, the number of gender clinics in the pediatric medical community has increased by 2000%. “Pediatric 'gender clinics' are considered elite centers for affirming children who are distressed by their biological sex. This distressful condition, once dubbed gender identity disorder, was renamed “gender dysphoria” in 2013,” Cretella wrote, Chicago City Wire previously reported. “In 2014, there were 24 of these gender clinics, clustered chiefly along the east coast and in California. One year later, there were 40 across the nation.”