Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a staunch pro-choice ally, was indicted and arrested this morning in Chicago on charges that he was planning to sell President-Elect Barack Obama’s Senate seat, reports ABC News. Part of the affadavit reads,

Later on November 3, 2008, ROD BLAGOJEVICH spoke with Advisor A.

By this time, media reports indicated that Senate Candidate 1, an
advisor to the President-elect, was interested in the Senate seat if it
became vacant, and was likely to be supported by the President-elect.
During the call, ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated, "unless I get something real
good for [Senate Candidate 1], s–t, I’ll just send myself, you know
what I’m saying." ROD BLAGOJEVICH later stated, "I’m going
to keep this Senate option for me a real possibility, you know, and
therefore I can drive a hard bargain. You hear what I’m saying. And if
I don’t get what I want and I’m not satisfied with it, then I’ll just
take the Senate seat myself." Later, ROD BLAGOJEVICH stated that the
Senate seat "is a f-ing valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for
nothing."

 

Blagojevich stands accused not only of attempting to sell Obama’s Senate seat but "allegedly used his authority as governor in an attempt to squeeze out campaign contributions."

Blagojevich has been a leader on women’s health. He publicly threatened to veto laws that would have permitted pharmacists to refuse to dispense emergency contraception to women if they morally opposed, for which he garnered praise from NARAL Pro-Choice America.  At the time, he said:  "Now, I understand that several bills have been introduced that would
overturn my executive order to protect women’s reproductive freedoms,"
Blagojevich said in the State of the State address last week. "So let
me make something else very clear — if any of those bills reach my
desk, they are dead on arrival." When running for re-election in 2006, he told the Windy City Times,

Think about what we’ve been able to do since I’ve been governor.
The reproductive freedoms of women are more protected in Illinois than
any state in America. That’s in [ stark ] contrast to the advances and
assaults coming from the Bush administration of Washington. We passed a
law under my leadership to make insurance companies fill female
contraceptives. Illinois had never done that before and we passed that
law. I’m the only candidate in this race who is 100 percent pro-choice.
We learned that there were guys behind the counters in pharmacies in
Illinois who weren’t dispensing birth control to women. Rather than try
to get the legislature to pass something—because we attempted to and
they didn’t do it—on my own, through executive order action, I forced
these guys to fill prescriptions for birth control for women who come
in with prescriptions from their doctors.

More recently, Blagojevich wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt to express disapproval of a new HHS regulation that would expand provider conscience protections, likely enabling health care providers to refuse to prescribe hormonal birth control, including emergency contraception.

Blagojevich’s indictment echoes that of former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, also a pro-choice leader, who last spring left office in the midst of revelations that he had paid for sex repeatedly.