By: Fran Eaton
Teens in Illinois are justified to roll their eyes and shrug their shoulders in exasperation. The adult lawmakers of this state should frustrate us all with their inconsistent public policies and hypocritical crusades.
The latest is an oncoming attack on tanning businesses.
State Rep. Robyn Gabel (D-Evanston) is expected to bring before the Illinois House Human Services Committee this week a bill that would ban any teenager from getting a tan in an indoor tanning salon. The introduction of Gabel’s bill coordinates with the American Academy of Pediatrics’ announcement that it is joining the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Dermatology in calling for teens to be restricted from indoor tanning booths.
Tanning beds endanger those younger than 18 by exposing them to intense ultraviolet rays that can weaken their skin cell structure, making the teens’ immature skin cells more vulnerable to devastating abnormalities that can lead to skin cancer. Tanning bed rays are four to 10 times more potent than natural sunlight, and even though most tanning salons carefully limit their clients’ time in tanning beds, the pediatrics group wants teen tans banned.
Small businesses, such as L.A. Tan, are encouraging their clients to call lawmakers and oppose Gabel’s SB 1666. Teens compose up to 15 percent of tanning salons’ clients, so such a ban could have a devastating effect on business.
Lawmakers and pediatricians are concerned that teens often are more concerned about superficial, short-term skin tones than serious, long-term health risks. And because teens naturally are more prone to risk-taking than are adults, most can’t be trusted to make rational health care decisions that could affect them for life.
But is all that concern about tanning beds rational? Really?
What can legislators and doctors do about teens who play volleyball and work as lifeguards on the beach, cross-country ski in the winter and run marathons in the spring? Will there be attempts to ban teens from sports exposing them to long periods of natural sunlight?
Will laws be passed requiring teens to wear a specific level of sunscreen and to don long sleeves as well as sunglasses and head coverings? All those items are recommended for outdoor sunwear by the American Pediatrics Academy.
Where will the sun-protection law lines be drawn? How much will be enough?
Indeed, state laws protect teens from themselves when it comes to tattoos and piercings. Parents must give permission for both. Teens are prohibited from buying tobacco and alcohol — even with parents’ permission. Young drivers are given specific legal guidelines for driving with passengers. High schoolers with jobs have working-hour restrictions and curfews. All Illinoisans are required to attend school from age 7 through 17.
The list goes on and on. Gabel’s tanning bed restriction would be just another added to Illinois teens’ list of no-nos.
But there’s one teen activity that Gabel has a history of promoting: sex.
And that’s one reason why her sponsorship of a teen tan ban is so hypocritical and embarrassing.
Before being appointed to the Illinois House in 2010, Gabel worked for Planned Parenthood. At Planned Parenthood, teen girls can get birth control without their parents being notified. They can be tested for sexually transmitted disease or pregnancy without anyone but staff ever knowing.
And for years, Gabel has been a staunch opponent of teen girls notifying their parents before getting an abortion — at any stage.
Gabel wants to ban Illinois teens’ access to tanning salons, but she fights any policy that would involve parents in their teens’ reproductive health care.
Are we rolling our eyes yet?
She makes her reproductive-rights position clear on her Web site: “At this moment, some of our gains are imperiled: Illinois is preparing to implement a parental notification law that will harm our most vulnerable young women; Congress is cruelly attempting to ban reproductive health services from the health care reform bill; and the Supreme Court continues its rightward turn.”
She’s very concerned about the “harmful” parental notification law that was passed into law in the 1990s but still remains unenforced, one court-ordered stay after another. Illinois is the only state in the Midwest that has implemented no abortion restrictions and where teen girls from other states flee to escape parents’ involvement in their major, life-changing health care decisions.
Even though all Illinois’ court-ordered obstacles have been removed, Attorney General Lisa Madigan continues to stubbornly drag her feet, purposefully doing everything possible to delay implementing Illinois parental notification process.
As a former employee of Planned Parenthood and a recipient of abortion rights’ campaign donations, Gabel resists parental notification prior to abortion while advocating to ban teen tans.
To Gabel, prohibiting taxpayer funding of abortion is “cruel.” And she’s alarmed that the Supreme Court is almost evenly balanced now between conservatives and liberals, because a tilt toward the right could prompt a revisit of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
“If it were not such a bold example of sick priorities, this (teen tan prohibition) bill would be totally hilarious,” said former Illinois prolife lawmaker Penny Pullen. “Parents in this representative’s district ought to be searching their souls over what this woman truly represents.”
Gabel’s credibility on HB 1666 would be enhanced if somehow she cared not only about teen girls’ skin, but also about what’s going on inside their hearts and souls.
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