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.
Abortion
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.
The measure known as the “Bodily Autonomy Sanctuary City Ordinance” would ratify and expand an executive order signed by Mayor Lori Lightfoot in July after the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The law, which was long dormant before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, violates the Michigan Constitution, said Judge Elizabeth Gleicher.
Abortion, which has long been a flashpoint in American politics, has once again taken center stage for both political parties. As the midterm election nears, the abortion issue is very likely to become a driving force in organizing and activism — on both sides.
The Republican nominee for Illinois governor, Darren Bailey, is feeling the backlash from both sides of the aisle for comparing abortion to the Holocaust. Our politics team weighs in on that story and more.
The move backs a push from progressive members of the City Council to enshrine those protections into law. Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s announcement came one day after several progressive members of the City Council urged their colleagues to protect those crossing state lines to get reproductive and gender-affirming health care in Chicago.
