From the Streets

The High Speed Rail Alliance is asking Illinoisans to urge Gov. J.B. Pritzker to make trains from Chicago to Rockford and the Quad Cities a reality. The governor’s Chicago office can be reached at 312.814.2121 or 2122.

“The return of service to these routes has been promised for more than a decade,” Alliance officials said in an email blast. “The funding is there, but we need the governor to take action to get construction underway.”

On the Quad Cities route, negotiations between the Iowa Interstate Railroad and the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) seem to be at an impasse, Alliance officials wrote. They want Pritzker to direct IDOT to engage Amtrak in negotiations with the railroad and to take action at the Surface Transportation Board, if needed.

The 160-mile, Chicago-to-Quad Cities route would run entirely within Illinois, on the BNSF Railway and Iowa Interstate Railroad. Trains would leave Chicago’s Union Station and stop in LaGrange, Naperville, Plano, Mendota, Princeton and Geneseo before terminating at the Moline Multimodal Station.

The Rockford route awaits a decision as to whether Amtrak or Metra will operate the trains. The Alliance wants Pritzker to tell IDOT to announce its choice quickly and to move forward with final engineering.

According to amtrakconnectsus.com, two trains daily in each direction would make the 80-mile trip between Chicago and Rockford in 111 minutes. Intermediate stops would be Roselle, Elgin, Huntley and Belvidere. The website compares the route to the 90-mile service by Amtrak’s Hiawatha between Chicago and Milwaukee. It cites $1.4 billion in economic impact from the capital investment alone, followed by $31.8 million annually. The demand would come from tourism to Chicago, as well as college and university students living between the two cities.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), chair of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus Providers and Clinics Task Force, and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) reintroduced their legislation, the “Abortion is Health Care Everywhere Act” March 23 in both houses of Congress. Schakowsky and Booker hosted their press conference on the House Triangle, on the east front of the U.S. Capitol.

The two legislators were joined by U.S. Reps. Barbara Lee (DCA), Diana DeGette (D-CO), and Norma Torres (D-CA), all original sponsors; and by U.S. Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Marilyn Strickland (D-WA). The bill has 142 original cosponsors in the House.

The Abortion is Health Care Everywhere Act would repeal the 1973 Helms Amendment to the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act, Schakowsky said. “For nearly 50 years, the racist, harmful Helms Amendment has barred U.S. foreign assistance from being used to offer abortion care, even in countries where abortions are legal. The United States should not stand in the way of health care and bodily autonomy in other countries. Developing countries bear the burden of 97% of all unsafe abortions. We must protect women's health around the globe.”

“For decades, many countries around the world relied on Roe v. Wade to expand access to abortion care in their own countries,” U.S. Sen. Booker said. “In the wake of the disastrous decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, …we must repeal the Helms Amendment and ensure that US foreign aid can be used for safe, legal abortion care overseas.”

According to research by the Guttmacher Institute, repeal of the Helms Amendment would mean 19 million fewer unsafe abortions, 17,000 fewer maternal deaths and 12 million fewer women who have abortion-related complications requiring medical treatment each year. The overall number of maternal deaths from unsafe abortions in these countries would decline by 98%.

-Suzanne Hanney, from email and online material