As clinics have been forced to shutter in Republican-dominant states with strict abortion bans, some have relocated to cities and towns just over the border, in states with more liberal laws. The goal is to help women avoid traveling long distances. Yet that effort does not always go smoothly.
Abortion
The departure of a conservative justice, Patience Roggensack, has given liberals an opportunity to seize the majority on a court that could decide on issues such as abortion, redistricting, and voting rights ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
The Chicago Commission on Human Relations now has the authority to investigate complaints of housing discrimination or retaliation. The commission will work with the city’s Office of Labor Standards to probe complaints of workplace discrimination or retaliation, according to the new law.
The law expands the number of health practitioners who can provide certain types of abortions; requires Illinois public entities to cover abortion, gender-affirming and HIV-prevention drugs as part of health insurance; and establishes legal criteria for ensuring parental autonomy in reproductive technology.
With the unanimous endorsement of the City Council’s Health and Human Relations Committee, the full City Council is scheduled to consider the measure, backed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, at its meeting scheduled for Jan. 18.
Support for abortion rights did drive women to the polls in Tuesday’s elections. But for many, the issue took on higher meaning, part of an overarching concern about the future of democracy.
As co-chair of the Senate’s Ukraine Caucus, Sen. Dick Durbin said any push to sit down at the negotiation table and offer Russia territory that it illegally took must come from the Ukrainians, not Western pressure.
After the Dobbs Supreme Court decision, the legality of telemedicine abortion in some states isn’t clear for providers and patients.
The announcement came 100 days after the Supreme Court ruling that stripped away constitutional protections for abortions, allowing states to ban the procedure. Illinois didn't institute an abortion ban, but neighboring Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee did, along with several other states in the South and Midwest.
Surrounded by states with abortion bans that took effect after Roe v. Wade fell, Illinois is one of the few places where the procedure remains legal in the Midwest. Abortion-rights supporters are worried that might not last.
Owen County Judge Kelsey Hanlon issued a preliminary injunction against the ban that took effect one week ago. The injunction was sought by abortion clinic operators who argued in a lawsuit that the state constitution protects access to the medical procedure.
The new law is modeled on the city’s rules designed to protect immigrants from prohibiting members of the Chicago Police Department from cooperating with federal law enforcement agencies.
With the most intense period of campaigning only just beginning, Democrats have already invested more than an estimated $124 million this year in television advertising referencing abortion. That’s almost 20 times more than Democrats spent on abortion-related ads in the 2018 midterms.
Republicans face a challenge after emerging from a tumultuous summer, defined by the Supreme Court abortion decision, high-profile hearings on former President Donald Trump’s actions during the insurrection and intensifying legal scrutiny of his handling of classified information and efforts to overturn the election.
The near-total ban on abortion that took effect Thursday in Indiana will force more people to travel to already-overwhelmed Illinois clinics for reproductive health care and seek help from groups that have already reached their capacity, reproductive health care advocates told WTTW News.
The amendment would affirm the right to make pregnancy-related decisions without interference in Michigan, including abortion and other reproductive services such as birth control.
