South Cook News

A meeting between a state representative and her constituents in which the lawmaker allegedly offered castration as a solution to abortion has prompted outrage from some citizens, a variety of comments from Republicans, and mostly silence from fellow Democrats.

Rep. Diane Pappas (D-Itasca) discussed the Reproductive Health Act, or House Bill 2495, with a DuPage County pro-life group including Wayne Township Republican trustee Jackie Hayden, and was reported to have said, “If we allowed men to be castrated, took the sperm to the bank, collected tax dollars on it for storage, then when it's time, to have the man decide he's ready to begin a family ... well, then the problem is solved.”

South Cook News' attempts for comment from Rep. Kambrium Buckner (D-Chicago) have thus far gone unanswered.

According to the language of HB 2495, every individual has “a fundamental right to make autonomous decisions about one's own reproductive health.” The bill will provide that every individual who becomes pregnant “has a fundamental right to continue the pregnancy and give birth or to have an abortion, and to make autonomous decisions about how to exercise that right.”

Hayden wrote in a commentary posted on the Wayne Township Republican Organization website that Pappas’s remarks “didn’t leave me speechless, but agitated.” She asserted that Pappas “continued to lie about HB2495, such as how she claimed that it was dead.”

Hayden’s piece was also published on April 23 in the DuPage Policy Journal. Repeated messages left at Pappas’ office by the Journal also went unanswered, the publication reported.