On Monday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Hallie Jackson Reports,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) said that the $500,000 the city is allocating for people seeking abortions in Chicago from neighboring states “is simply a down payment” and “a start, and not an ending.”
Lightfoot said, “$500,000 is simply a down payment to help our frontline providers get over this immediate hurdle. But they tell us they’ve already seen an exponential increase in the amount of calls to helplines from out of state, just from what’s happened in Texas. And over the last week, there’s a lot of panic and fear, because too many women believe that Roe has already been overturned and that their right to access to reproductive care has already been extinguished. And if you look around Chicago, we’ve got a number of states that have the so-called trigger laws that would ban abortion upon the reversal of Roe. So, we’ve seen a substantial increase already, and we’re expecting, frankly, an explosion of new cases from women in Wisconsin, Missouri, potentially Michigan, Indiana. I think the list is long, and Chicago is going to be an oasis in the midwest and we’ve got to be ready. So, this is a start, and not an ending.”
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