Lawmakers, step up to protect women’s right to safe abortion and reproductive health care

Illinois House members should show their respect for women and pass the Reproductive Health Act. Time is running. Women are waiting.

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Pro-Choice Rally “Fight4Her” Held Outside White House

Signs at a pro-choice rally in front of the White House in March 2019.

Photo by Astrid Riecken/Getty Images

The stakes have never been higher. States controlled by anti-abortion zealots are in a fevered race to the U.S. Supreme Court in hopes that the Court’s new majority will overturn Roe. These activists hope to drag the country backwards to a time when legal abortion was banned and women died from back-alley procedures.

These efforts extent beyond abortion. New laws around the country would deny women access to contraception and other medical care — including assisted reproductive technologies and prenatal testing. 

These laws hurt women — by denying us the right to make health care decisions that protect our own health and, in many instances, our lives. Uncontroverted legal authority affords a man the legal right to refuse to donate a kidney or even blood to his child, even if the child needs that tissue donation to survive. Courts consistently have ruled that each individual has constitutionally protected autonomy to make their own health care decisions — a right separating the United States from fascist regimes. 

A reversal of Roe would deny women the right to make reproductive health care decisions that prioritize our own life and health, whether it is using contraception or having an abortion. (Carrying a pregnancy to term has many more health consequences for a woman than does safe, legal abortion.)

With precious few days left before they adjourn this spring, Illinois lawmakers can send a strong message that they respect women’s right to make our own health care decisions, especially reproductive health decisions. The Reproductive Health Act (RHA), introduced in February, has languished in the Illinois House. The bill eliminates decades of Illinois law that criminalize abortion and some forms of birth control, measures not currently enforced in Illinois but still on the books. The RHA makes clear that abortion care, contraception and maternal care are health care, not crimes. Women must have the protected right to make our own health decisions – in consultation with our doctors – to the same degree that men do. 

Illinois House members should show their respect for women and pass the RHA. Time is running out. The women of Illinois are waiting. 

 Colleen K. Connell, executive director, ACLU of Illinois

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A new day in Chicago

For the past eight years, the political status quo has enriched tech investors, Wall Street financiers, and real estate moguls while black and Latinx Chicagoans lost their jobs, their homes, and their lives.

But 2019 was a change election. Across our city, voters ousted the corrupt political dynasties of old and opted instead for the promise of change. 

Now it is time to make good on that promise. That’s why, together with our progressive colleagues, we released a set of legislative priorities for the first 100 days of the new City Council.

Our plan includes:

  • Addressing skyrocketing rents and widespread homelessness with three ordinances: “Homes for All,” “Development for All,” and “Bring Chicago Home.” These ordinances will rebuild affordable family housing, restore public housing stock, and begin the process of raising taxes on the sale of multi-million dollar properties.
  • Curtailing reckless TIF spending with an ordinance to return annual TIF surplus funds to our public schools.
  • Limiting the impact of the city’s unjust and inaccurate gang database with amendments to the Welcoming City Ordinance.
  • A community benefits agreement ordinance for the Obama Presidential Center to preserve affordability, create jobs, and prevent displacement on the South Side.
  • Raising the minimum wage to $15 by 2021.

This plan is just the beginning. There is much more work to be done to make our city a peaceful, just, and abundant home for all of us. But these ordinances will immediately begin to improve the schools, jobs, safety, and housing conditions in our neighborhoods. 

It’s a new day in Chicago. We look forward to working with the new mayor and City Hall to make a Chicago for the many a reality. 

Ald. Sue Sadlowski Garza (10th), Ald.-Elect Maria Hadden (49th)

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