* Rep. Gregg Johnson (D-East Moline) received a sustained standing ovation last night after delivering this speech during debate on Senate Bill 1909, a bill to expand the Consumer Fraud Act to protect individuals from deceptive practices by crisis pregnancy centers…
Back in September of 2021, shortly after I announced my candidacy for the seat, I was approached by a local activist who asked if I’d be willing to tell the story at an upcoming women’s rights event of a 33-year-old mother from Rock Island that died six months prior to the Roe v. Wade decision due to preeclampsia.
I agreed, under the condition that all three of her kids would meet and allow me to give an accurate picture of the story. The oldest daughter was 11 at the time of her mother’s death, and was the only one of the kids with any memory of their mother’s story. The son, who was eight, had no memory of his mother, and the youngest daughter was only 15 months old at the time of the mother’s passing.
The mother’s name was Shirley Hunter. And with each pregnancy, she suffered through life-threatening preeclampsia. She gave birth to her third child, a baby girl, in April of 1971. She was told that she would not survive another pregnancy. In January of 1972, she found out that she was pregnant and began to contemplate just what would become of her kids were she to die.
The world was much, much different then. Earning money for a single mother was incredibly difficult. But she scrimped and she saved and she refused to take her medication to save on costs. But she was finally able to save enough money to go to New York. New York at that time was the only place where you could get a legal and safe abortion in our country. But by the time she got there, she was told she was too far along and nothing can be done.
She returned home to Rock Island with essentially a death sentence. The older sister talked about how her mother had spent her last Fourth of July with the kids watching the fireworks and eating ice cream, knowing that it would be her last. She died nine days later.
Kathy, the sister, talked about how she only found out a few days later at the funeral home that the man that she had called Dad for as early as she could remember and the father of the other two was actually not her biological father. And she was taken away from the funeral home kicking and screaming as she was torn away from her siblings and went to live with her father and a new family. She never lived with her siblings again.
The younger sister, Tracy, she talked about how she went through life. Always feeling like everyone viewed her as a little girl that lost her mom and never be at peace about knowing her past. The son had spent 49 years running from the past and was unwilling to confront it. He had absolutely no memory of his mother. And it bothers him to this day that he cannot remember the sound of her voice in times of crisis or even what she looked like the first eight years of his life are wiped clean.
But this story is about Shirley and the moments that she missed in her childrens’ lives. The fact that she was never given the opportunity to pick them up when they fell down or to give them praise when they succeeded. She wasn’t there when her oldest daughter graduated from nursing school and started a 40-year career in taking care of others or when she herself became a mother and grandmother. She wasn’t there when our youngest daughter became the best community organizer that I’ve ever seen, nor to see her become a parent.
She also wasn’t there to help her when the daughter herself became pregnant at an early age and attended one of these clinics and was surrounded by employees with a clinic that offered her nothing but group prayer and disturbing pictures.
Nor was she there to see her little boy win his first race or make his biggest first basket. Nor was she able to guide him along the nearly 40-year journey for him to find purpose in his life. Finally, she was not there in January of this year, when her son was sworn into the 103 General Assembly of this chamber.
Shirley Hunter was my mother and these girls were my sisters, and our lives were thrown into chaos, because our mother had no other option than to die and leave us. An increasingly activist Supreme Court has created a situation in which countless more families just like ours will be thrown into chaos and women and families all over the world will experience the same grief and trauma that ours did.
I am honored to serve along with 117 other members of this house. And I absolutely believe I would not be here had not the experience of my life form my social core. All that being said, I would trade every one, every day here and every day of the last 50 years if I’d had my mother to walk along me on my path through life.
I want to thank the sponsor for this bill.
Prior to last June, I was at least cognizant of the fact that this was never going to happen to any other little girls and the other eight-year-old boy and the other women. I can’t say that anymore. I now worry about our future going forward. And I will also tell you that it has been painful the last year and a half. Every single time I tell this story, it takes a chunk out me. It does. But this is important. It’s important work we do here. For just the rest of the day I’ll probably still feel like that eight-year-old lonely boy. But tomorrow, we go back to work, tonight we go back to work, and that work includes protecting women and their ability to make their own health care decisions. Thank you.
